Astral synthesis
by esama
Summary: While on the search for himself, Arrom of Vis Uban finds more than Daniel Jackson could've dreamed of - and with Harry Potter he builds even more. AU version of SG1 season 7, warnings for Slash and OOCness.
1. Chapter one

Warnings; Slash, amnesia, OOCness, Spoilers. AU version of SG1 season seven, starting from episode "Fallen".

**Astral synthesis**

**Chapter one**

In the second week of Arrom's existence, as far as he remembered it anyway, there was a fair in the old ruins where the Azul had made their village. Shamda said that it happened once a month - Azul tribe's trading partners and friends all came through the Chappa'ai, and they set up a great marketplace not far from where the Azul had set camp, years ago.

"We have the space and security many do not," Shamda explained, when the fair was being set up and many people from many different tribes, many of them nomadic like the Azul. "The False Gods do not know of this place, so it is safe for us to gather in. Even earth worms can thrive, when they remain hidden."

Arrom had nodded, though he had still much to learn and hadn't understood more than half of what the elder had said. False Gods was a concept he still had to grasp and with Shamda everything had a deeper meaning - the old man did like his metaphorical stories after all. He hadn't been that interested about the history of the fair, as he was about the fair itself, and the people. Two weeks of unknowing had gone past, after all, and he had learned that the Azul wouldn't be able to help him regain his old self. Maybe the other travellers from other worlds could.

The fair had been the most magnificent thing he had seen - but it didn't take much to impress someone with only two week's worth of memories. But truly, it had been a sight to see, and experience. Many of the tents had been colourful, red and purple and green, and the items they had sold were even more so. Whilst the Azul merchants only sold hues of blue, the people from other world weren't restricted by habits and had every colour under the sky in their wares - no matter what they were. One merchant had even managed to make a _knife_ colourful. The smells of the fresh food items had been enthralling. Fruits he had never seen or even imagined, freshly baked pastries, bundles of vegetables and grain, and in a large tent there was a pan full of fried _something_, he didn't know what but it smelled incredible.

Arrom hadn't bought anything, though. He had nothing to buy anything with - what little he owned was graciously given but cheap, only insisting of what the Azul who had taken him in did not need. His tent was poor, his clothes second hand, and so was everything else - nothing of it was worth a trade. And as he had no trade and no expertise to offer, no one offered him payment.

It was perhaps a good thing - had he had something to barter with, he probably would've spent it on worthless things, unaware of their true worth.

But to see the fair was good enough, to experience it. What was most valuable, though, were the stories from the off-worlders. There were great sum of them. Stories of False Gods and cruel religions, of natural disasters and tragic events that had led many of them leaving the planets they had been born in. Then there were stories of wars and battles, of near miracles and of life. They were all interesting, they all gave Arrom something more to know than the mere awareness of how little he really knew.

What he really wanted to know was the only thing none of them could tell him, though.

"Well, you remind me a little of the Kherosians - they all have blue eyes like yours. They tend to be blonde haired though," said a shoe merchant.

"I've heard of one false god that takes people and then returns them different - sometimes horribly disfigured, sometimes child-minded. Maybe your people are under her thrall?" a woman who made jewellery and hand-woven scarfs offered.

And so forth. They had suggestions and ideas, but none of them really knew - and after a moment Arrom realised that they offered their suggestions only in hopes that he would buy something from them. After a while he withdrew from the market in order to contemplate what he had and hadn't learned, taking a seat on a fallen piece of pillar not far from a stall where young man and woman sold clothes and leatherwork.

That was when the woman had approached him. Zira was her name and she was beautiful - and also knew it. She wore long dress with a leather belt vest over it that went around her waist and under her chest, bringing her figure out. "I hear you are looking for a place, blue eyes," she said as a way of greeting, and offered him a drink from her flask. "Maybe I can help you with that."

Arrom had accepted, shy and hopeful, asking her what she knew. Zira hadn't said, not after he had taken a drink, and then she had told him a loose story about these people she had met, nomads like the Azul who reminded her much of Arrom - she had met them only in passing, but she knew where they would be, and maybe she would tell Arrom when she would know a little more. Then she had offered him a drink again.

By the time Khordib, who had given Arrom his old tent and some of his mother's old cooking tools, found him, Arrom's eyes were failing him more than usually, no longer just blurry but straying and oddly doubled. But regardless he had been feeling good. Zira was smiling and warm at his side, telling him stories of belonging and home and who he was - a worker of a difficult trade, not something he could easily discover or remember by trial and error. She was just getting up, offering him her hand, telling him to come with him, when Khordib was there and angry.

The following night had been miserable. Arrom had been hot and cold and restless and yet too lethargic to move. Khordib and his wife had sat with him through it, smoothing a cool cloth over his shoulders and neck until he fell into uneasy slumber. The day that had followed had been even worse, his stomach had been agitated and everything he had eaten had threatened to come up his throat again.

"Zira comes from a tribe of life-traders," Khordib had told him while Fasira, his wife, had been setting incense around the tent, trying to soothe Arrom's nausea. "She has been told not to practice that in the fair, but sometimes she doesn't listen. She will not be allowed to return."

"Life-traders?" Arrom asked, frowning.

Khordib had grimaced - and that was sign enough of how vile it was, as Khordib was usually amiable and smiling man. "They lure humans of other worlds with them and then they sell them - either to other humans or whoever will buy them, False Gods for example. They often use potions to do it, like with you."

"I thought it was wine," Arrom sighed, closing his eyes, swallowing his nausea. He wondered or a moment whether or not he should've been outraged - or shamed - about what had occurred. He hadn't before thought of himself as naive, but obviously he was. "If her people are like that, why are they invited to the fair at all?"

"Their medicine is exceptional," the Azul man answered with a sigh. "Try and get some rest, Arrom. Give your body the time to expel the potion she fed you."

It took little more than few words for Arrom to really understand what the concept of humans being sold really meant. Though the knowledge tingled in his mind, like something old, something he _should've known_, he didn't - and Khordib had to explain it to him. Still, the idea of slavery seemed distant and strange - and perhaps all the more frightening because he couldn't quite imagine it. Khordib said that it could be horrible - like way it had been for the Azul, when they had been still under the control of their False God - and though that too was too foreign for Arrom to comprehend, it was too _true_ for him to feel complacent about.

The fair was the last time he actively went out seeking answers - even from the Azul. It wasn't that he was afraid of it happening again - he now knew better than to accept strange drinks, after all, or the alluring words spoken by a beautiful woman, and he knew to trust only those who had proven themselves trustworthy. But what little he had of himself was _all_ he had. In the end the things the Azul had given to him out of kindness weren't really his, his tent wasn't really his. All he had was himself - his own body and his mind, as much as it failed him. It was very little - but he didn't want to lose the ownership of it.

Not because of his own naivety.

"Only the curious parrot gets his answers, not the cautious lizard," Shamda said to him few days later, after the fair had come and gone, and the open are it had stood was once more empty. "You need not be afraid of asking, Arrom. There is no such thing as foolishness in curiosity."

Arrom smiled thinly and shook his head. "It's not that I'm afraid of being curious - and being thought a fool for it. It's the foolishness of naivety that I dread," he answered, and looked at his hands. "These hands can't do much - they can't weave a basket or repair a tear and even in simple task like cooking they fail me, but they are all I have. I cannot loose them."

"And you won't. Trust us a little," Shamda said, patting his shoulder once. "We learned from this unfortunate event too - and those who can't learn, can't grow. We will look out for you."

Which, Arrom admitted, wasn't a difficult task. After the off-world traders had left, there were no others in the planet aside from the Azul, and no dangers. The ruins had very little in way of wild life - and next to no predators. It was very safe - much like it had been before the fair. It was just the Azul and the ancient ruins of a city that had fallen eons and eons ago.

But he couldn't ask any more questions - it seemed foolish now. Instead he turned to the task he had tried on and off for the past weeks, and directed all his attention to it. Fasira and Khordib were his patient guides, thankfully, showing him the small, everyday tasks of the Azul. He wasn't good at them even after practice, and everyone knew it. The little weaving he tried turned out messy and knotted, his fingers didn't have the nimbleness to use a needle, he wasn't that talented with leather working either, and he failed at cooking. He even couldn't get something like re-assembling a table right - and the one time he tried to collapse and re-erect his tent ended up in a mess.

"Perhaps you should stop trying to hard and let these things come to you. Obviously your people have no need for need for these types of tasks, so your hands do not know how to do them. Try something else, and then something else, until your hands find something they know," Fasira suggested, and Arrom couldn't tell her it wasn't the point.

He wasn't sure if he could remember. Two weeks - soon three - of not knowing anything had given him little hope for the resurrection of his memories. And in the time sense, he had learned very little new. He still felt the same - exactly the same - as he had when he had woken up naked in the ruins, knowing nothing. It was so little - he was so little. Almost losing it made him realise that - and he wanted to be more. He couldn't make new memories so fast, he couldn't make more time, but maybe if he would learn new skills, if he could be… knowledgeable about something, then he would feel like he was more than empty body.

When he admitted this to Shamda, the old man gave him a look. "Emptiness is not always the sign of nothingness. A cup's worth is not measured in what it contains, is it?"

"Yes, but if it contains nothing then it's merely a cup," Arrom argued.

"Perhaps, but empty cup has the potential of being filled - and emptiness of the cup in and of itself is merely illusion. Air is something, after all. Even if you can't see it, it's there and sometimes cup full of air is worth more than cup full of gold," the old man answered, frowning at him. "Have you given up on regaining your memories, my young friend?"

Arrom sighed, glancing around them in the ruins. "I can feel them sometimes - my memories. They're fluttering on the edges of my mind, but when I try to capture them, they vanish. And I've tried, Shamda, I really have, but every time I try…" he shook his head. "I cannot explain it. It's like the act of trying to reach them makes them disappear."

"Knowledge is often elusive," the elder man sighed in agreement, sitting down beside him. "I wish I could help you with this, but I'm afraid my lessons about regaining lost memories are few and far between. There is truly nothing you remember?"

The younger man shook his head, staring at the ground before them for a moment. "Sometimes… sometimes it feels like I can read," he said carefully and looked up. "The ruins, I mean. Sometimes it's like I know the writing in the stones. But… it escapes me too."

Shamda hummed before nodding thoughtfully. "Maybe you should go to the east - where the ruins are more intact. The writings there are better preserved."

"I thought the ruins there are unstable," Arrom said with a frown.

The old man smiled. "That's what we say to the children who would very much like to climb on top of them," he admitted with a chuckle. "I've no doubt that you can walk among the ruins safely, so as long as you do not risk any daring stunts."

Arrom nodded slowly, glancing towards a fallen piece of wall near by, where some of the symbols were still visible, others worn away by time. "If I remember the language - if I know… what would it mean?"

"That I don't know. Perhaps that you're descendant of the people who once lived there? Mysteries are nature's footsteps - we can try backtracking them, but in the end we inevitably fail, just like a hyena will fail to backtrack the turtle into the ocean," Shamda chuckled, standing up. "But if you open yourself to the universe, perhaps bit of the universe will open to you."

The younger man sighed and nodded. He supposed he might as well - it wasn't like he was making any process with any of the tasks he had tried to learn to perform.

x

The next morning, Arrom packed a satchel with some food and took a water skin, before dressing into his warmest cloak and leaving the campsite. The ruins Shamda had spoken about were two hour's walk from where the camp was, but he didn't mind the trip. One thing he had learned about himself was that walking came easily for him - Fasira had even said that he had the body of a lifelong traveller. Whatever it meant Arrom doesn't know, but his feet were steady and it took him hours to lose his breath - if he ever did.

It was noon when he arrived to the eastern section of the ruins. It did not make the hour very light, though. It was the storm season after all, and the sky had been covered in perpetual clouds since Arrom woken up - and according the Azul, that wasn't about to change for another moon or so. He had been expecting that, however, and instead relying to the sky for light, Arrom took out a torch and flint, lighting his way by fire as he traversed among the ruins.

The writing on the walls and pillars was clearer in the eastern section, just like Shamda had said, but though the more preserved symbols seem to spark something in his mind, it's not quite a memory or knowledge. Disappointed, Arrom ran his hand over the symbols, dipping his fingertips into them and exploring their odd, sharp edges. They seemed so familiar - he was certain he was supposed to understand them. But like everything else, the knowledge behind the symbols eluded him, avoiding his attempts to understand like smoke in wind.

He spent a moment trying to read a particularly well preserved piece of wall, before giving up, swallowing the bitter discontentment he couldn't help but feel. Shaking his head at the ruins, at Shamda, at himself, he took a seat near by and turned his attention to his lunch. He hadn't brought much, just bit of dried bred and some dried fruits with some a grettan root he had gotten from Fasira, but it would be enough for simple, cold meal. He ate it slowly, nibbling the bread bit by bit before peeling the roots. Every now and then he glanced at the wall, but the symbols wouldn't reveal their secrets to him.

That was when he heard the humming, coming from behind him. Frowning, he turned around, holding his fruit knife tightly in his grip and feeling sudden, unexplained fear that it would be one of Zira's tribe, coming to get him when he was alone. Some more experienced sense he had that he hadn't known of told him that if that was the case, the person wouldn't have warned him with the humming, but he pushed the thought aside tensely.

"…teach us something please," the voice that had been humming more mumbled than sand, tone too distracted to be even vaguely musical. "Whether we be old and bald… or young with scabby knees… hmmm…."

Arrom stood up, just as the other man walked into sight from behind one of the less collapsed walls of the ruins. He could immediately tell that the other man wasn't Azul - he wore a frayed, dark grey robe and hooded cloak, and his skin was much paler than the Azul had. He also had odd adornment on his face - some sort of jewellery maybe, two pieces of flat glass in metal frame that went over his eyes. The Azul - or anyone he had seen in the fair - had jewellery like that.

"Oh," the young man said, noticing him. "Oh finally, I've been lost in this place for hours," he said, sounding delighted as he pushed the dark hood of his cloak down, revealing messy black hair tied loosely to the back of his neck. "There's a settlement somewhere here, right? Can you tell me which way is it?" he asked, pushing the odd face-jewellery higher on his nose. When Arrom didn't answer and only blinked with surprise, the younger man frowned. "Aw, blimey. You can't understand me, can you?" he asked, sighing. "Damn it, I need translation again. Um -"

"No, I can understand you," Arrom answered awkwardly. "And… you mean the village of the Azul? It's that way," he added, pointing.

"Great," the young man sighing with relief. "I'm not good at pantomiming - or translation spells. The Azul, huh? That's a nice name," the younger man said, peering to the direction Arrom had pointed. "How far is it?"

"About two hours on foot," Arrom said. "You are a traveller? Are you looking to… trade, maybe?"

"Yes," the younger man answered, patting his heavily packed shoulder back. "Only have some fruits and such to trade with, but I was hoping it would be enough to get me some spices. I'm running a little low." He turned to Arrom and smiled. "Well, I'm going to keep on moving. It's kind of cold in here, I want to keep warm. Thanks for the directions," he said.

"You're welcome," Arrom nodded, and then watched as the young man turned and headed towards the village, resuming his humming soon after. Soon the young man was too far away for Arrom to see him or to hear his odd melody.

Sometime later, after eating and taking another look around the ruins, Arrom turned around as well and begun his trek back to the village, wondering if the odd traveller in grey cloaks had managed to make a trade - and how he had ended up so far from the village, as the chappa'ai was in completely different direction. He could track the odd traveller back, he found, after he found the other's footsteps - the stranger's footwear had peculiar pattern that no other footprints in the area had. The traveller had meandered around the ruins a little as he had looked for the right paths, but by the looks of it he had made it mostly in straight line.

When Arrom made it to the village, he found the traveller still there, sitting with some of the Azul traders on a carpet that had been spread to the middle of the settlement. By the looks of it, he was bartering with them, showing them strange fruits he was carrying and settling proper trades between the fruits and spices. "The flavour is bitter - and sour - but it's good for cooking," he was saying about odd, slightly oval shaped yellow fruit. "Also, it's pretty good for you health wise - vitamins and such. In my world there used to be this disease called scurvy that happened because people wouldn't eat any fruits - they got tired and lost their teeth and stuff. This fruit was the cure for it…"

Arrom gave the bartering circle a look, raising his eyebrows a little at the number of different fruits the traveller had brought with him. There seemed to be one of every colour yellow, orange, green, red, even purple, and all of them were fresh. Arrom hadn't seen any fresh fruits - even in the fair everything had been mostly dried or pickled.

"Shamda," he greeted, seeing the elder man standing not far from the bartering circle.

"You're back," the old man nodded. "Did the look around the ruins help?"

"No, not really," Arrom shook his head, still looking at the stranger - who was now taking out wooden bowls and revealing them to be full of fresh berries. He shook his head with slight amazement. "His world must have a bountiful harvest moon," he said.

"Some worlds are more blessed than others," Shamda agreed, though he was frowning a little. "He came from a strange direction, though - not from the chappa'ai."

Arrom nodded. "I saw him in the eastern ruins - I gave him directions," he admitted. "He said he wanted to trade for spices."

Shamda nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps he came by a ship," he murmured. "It hasn't happened before - not here, not yet, but I have seen it in other worlds; people using the vessels of the False Gods." He shook his head and turned to Arrom again. "I'm sorry that the ruins did not revive any memories."

Arrom shook his head and smiled thinly. "I am too," he said. "But now I am somewhat certain that once I did know and understand those symbols. I could feel it."

"Perhaps it will come to you in time," the old man said, patting his shoulder. "Now, come. Let's have some tea - it's a chilly afternoon today."

Arrom joined him and dutifully drank the bitter tea the old man favoured - but which was excellent for warming up in a cold day. When Shamda, with one parting wisdom about the snake of time and how one could never find the head or the tail of it, decided to spent the rest of the afternoon reading the old Azul texts, Arrom thanked him and then headed out. Outside it had begun to rain the cool, thin rain that heralded a heavier pour.

He wasn't surprised to find that the bartering circle had finished and that the carpet had been rolled. The stranger was still there, though, packing his new belongings into the sealed wood containers he had carried berries in, and wrapping the rest in cloth to preserve them from most of the rain. The traveller didn't seem too annoyed by the rain, but his cloak and robes seemed both fairly worn by use, and his shoulders were shivering slightly.

For a moment, Arrom was tempted to go to him and offer him some advice - tell him that the rain would get heavier soon and that if he headed back now he would get soaked through. But his hesitation and suspicion won, and after a moment he turned to head into his own tent, only shaking his head slightly as he saw the stranger turning and heading towards the way of the eastern ruins.

Well, it wasn't his business if a trader from off world got sick in the rain - and by the sound of it, the man had some knowledge of medicine, so maybe he didn't need a warning anyway. Telling himself that he had no need to feel guilty, Arrom unbound his tent's flap and closed it firmly to keep the tent warm, and the rain outside.

x

The next day, the traveller was back - and he didn't look at all sick, for which Arrom was secretly glad. He wasn't sure why he was so aware or concerned about the younger man, but it seemed that even when the man was behind him and across the village, Arrom could feel him there. It was odd and unsettling feeling, but as the traveller seemed to not only be in need of spices but also information, there was little he could do about it.

"He says he's is collecting stories from various worlds," Shamda said to him that afternoon, after having spend good two hours talking with the young traveller. Despite the suspicions of the previous day, the old man seemed pleased, even hearty, after having someone not only willingly but curiously listening to his tales. "He likes the magical ones especially - but not the ones about false gods. He was very curious about the story of Hasjia the medicine woman who purified a poisoned well with her spells. He even wrote it down."

Arrom nodded, wondering if the young traveller was a trader at all, but actually a storyteller or a scholar who just happened to do some bartering on the side. It seemed like a strange mixture. "Did he tell you where he's from?"

"I didn't ask - it didn't seem so important," Shamda said, clasping his hands behind his back. He gave the younger man a look. "I think Harry would've been interested about the story of how we found you, but I thought it better than not to tell him. It's your story to tell, after all."

"Harry?" Arrom asked, frowning a little thought not really at the name. He hadn't really thought that he _had_ a story to tell. But then, if this traveller was interested in strange, magical things… well, Arrom's supposed appearance from nowhere was rather magical, though not in a nice way if he was asked.

"That's his name," the old man nodded towards the dark cloaked young man, who was writing the story of an elder Azul woman into a thin sheet of paper with a sharpened piece of charcoal. "Harry the Potter, but apparently he can't do any pottery."

"Why is he called a Potter then?"

"Apparently it's a family name - one of his ancestors was a potter. Curious naming tradition, getting as title like that without the actual skill. But some worlds are like that," Shamda nodded and then hummed thoughtfully. "His ancestor's pottery must've been very exceptional. I wonder what it was like…"

While Harry the Potter talked with people and wrote their old, half forgotten stories down, Arrom watched curiously, especially interested of the way the young man wrote. After some time of watching, he too picked a piece of charcoal from his small stove, and tested the style himself, using the stick to sketch a symbol on extra piece of leather he had. He copied a symbol he had seen in the ruins, trying to get a better feel to it - maybe he would remember better writing it than he did when he just looked at it.

It didn't work. The symbol came out with practiced ease - as did several others, all drawn precisely by his hand, but without any insight information to their meaning. He wrote down all the separate symbols he had seen, hoping some of them would mean something, but none of them seemed to. After some time, he wiped the leather clean and threw it into the basket, putting the charcoal back into the stove, rekindling the fire instead. It at least was something he understood.

While he lifted a water pot to the stove, intending to make some tea, there was a slight knock against the wooden frame of his tent. "Hey," familiar voice said, and glancing backwards Arrom saw the traveller standing there, with a wad of papers in his hand. "I heard that you might have a story to share. Can I come inside?"

Arrom hesitated, not sure if his story was really worth the effort. It seemed so… simple and short to him, cruelly short. But maybe that was best left for the story collector to decide, he mused and nodded. "Sure," he said. "I was… I was just making tea. Would you like some?"

"I'd love some," the Potter said, smiling and stepping inside. "My name is Harry, by the way."

"I've heard," the elder man nodded, reaching to take out his tea container. He didn't have much, but it would be enough for one pot. "I am called Arrom."

"It's nice to meet you," the younger man said, and Arrom could both hear and sense how he sat down on one of the cushions. "I'm not sure what you've heard from the others, but I collect certain type of stories - I'm trying to find some people, actually and I was hoping that stories might help me there."

"How can you find people with stories?" Arrom asked, confused.

The young man shrugged. "I am trying to find them by other ways too, but from stories I can tell if they've been here or not - or somewhere else. And then maybe if I can find if they were here or somewhere else, then maybe I can find where they went. History is good for telling stuff like that," he said, leafing through his paper sheets and taking out a clean one. "Your story is a bit more recent, though, or so I've heard."

"It's… it's not much of a story," Arrom said hesitantly, frowning a little as the younger man wrote something down. "I, um. I only remember waking up naked in the ruins, about a moon ago, but Khordib tells me that there was a flash of light before they found me, like lightning but without the sound," he said, and shook his head.

The young man wrote it down and then glanced up. "You just woke up in the ruins?" he asked. "After flash of white light?"

Arrom nodded. "I do not remember anything before it," he admitted. "Not even my name. The Azul named me - Arrom means Naked One," he shook his head at the thoughtful look the younger man gave him. "It's better than having no name."

"And the Azul tribe had never met you before you appeared?"

"Yes. None of their trading patterns know me either - there was a fair some time ago, but no one knew me. They couldn't even say what world I might be from," Arrom said, and Harry nodded slowly, writing it down. Apparently the story was worth writing it down. "Does this mean something to you?" Arrom asked, carefully trying not to get his hopes up - or give his naivety any chance to flourish.

"Yes. Yes, it does," Harry murmured, glancing up. "You haven't been able to remember anything after?"

Arrom swallowed and nodded "I've tried," he said softly. "Sometimes I feel as if I might, but… it goes away. I can never hold onto it."

Harry nodded, not writing down but just looking at him. "It's been one… moon since you appeared? After that, has anything strange happened to you?" he asked.

"Strange? Like what?" Arrom asked, frowning and thinking about Zira.

"Strange. Like, say… something changing its size? Or turning into different colour? Maybe floating?" Harry asked, and then sighed as Arrom just looked at him incredulously. "Maybe a strange feeling then?" the younger man asked hopefully. "Something that's not memory related?"

Arrom frowned and started to shake his head before stopping. "You," he said, narrowing his eyes with concentration. "I… it's strange, but I could sense you across the camp today. I still can. If you stood up and walked away, I could feel you going - I would… be aware."

The younger man's eyebrows shot up and for a moment he looked like he was about to break into a smile, before forcing himself serious. "Okay, okay this could be something. Let's, uh. Let's try something," he said, and rummaged through his shoulder bag. After a moment, he produced a long, polished stick of light shaded wood with a leather woven handle. "Here," he said, handing it over. "Hold that up and tell me if you feel anything."

Arrom gave him a confused look, but took the strange, well crafted stick. It felt warm in his fingers, and as he gripped the handle, he could tell that it was old and well handled. The leather was smooth and worn by use. He couldn't feel anything strange though, nothing out of the ordinary, so he ran his other hand's fingers along the length of the polished wood, wondering about its purpose. Maybe it was some sort of commanding tool - used for pointing things? He frowned, running his finger towards the tip - and then quickly pulling his hand back, as he felt that the tip of the wooden stick was hot.

"What?" Harry asked, leaning eagerly forward and reaching out to touch the tip. Unlike Arrom, who had reflective pulled away from the sting of the heat, Harry held his finger onto the tip of the stick until his skin was red and looked like it would get a mild burn. He was now smiling - almost grinning with excitement.

"What is it?" Arrom asked, awkwardly handing the stick back and wondering what was so special about it.

"It's a tool very few can use," the traveller answered, taking the stick and frowning at it in concentration. He murmured something under his breath, and the tip of the stick glowed faintly white, before fading. The Potter smiled sadly at the tool. "It doesn't work as well as it used to," he said as if explain something Arrom hadn't even asked. "But anyway - only my people can use things like this. Only my people can make the wand react."

Arrom frowned, eying him for a moment before the realisation dawned. "Only your people… and you think the tip of the stick grew hot because of me?" he asked slowly. "You think I'm…?"

"Maybe," the other nodded, lowering the stick. He frowned, looking at him worriedly. "It does sound like it would fit. Flash of light, appearing from nowhere - having no memories. My people can do that - could do that. I just… I haven't seen any of them in years. I haven't even heard from them - and I've been looking."

"How can you lose your people? Were they… kidnapped?" Arrom asked, now a little uneasy.

"It… it wasn't that they got lost - _I_ got lost," Harry answered, rubbing his neck awkwardly. "One day I just found myself in a world without them. In a reality without them. It's, uh. It's a long story."

"Reality," the elder man murmured, frowning and wondering why the concept felt so familiar. It was like the symbols, except nothing like it. "So you listen and collect stories about magic because that way you think you can find your people? And now you think I'm one of them?"

The younger man shrugged. "I do try other ways too, but yeah, that's more or less it," he said. "Do you believe in magic?"

Arrom hesitated before lowering his eyes. "I don't know," he said finally. "I can't really say what I do or don't believe - I can't remember. But… with the way I appeared here, I suppose I can't say that I don't believe it. But I haven't… I haven't been able to do anything special. I haven't even thought of it, or dreamt of it - I never thought it was possible that I could…"

"I suppose it makes sense. I would demonstrate, but I can't really, not here. You need a magical world to perform magic right - and this one isn't. None of the ones I've seen so far are," Harry said thoughtfully.

"That… makes no sense to me," Arrom admitted, giving him a look.

"Okay. Um. It's like this. Back where I come from, there were thousands of us, hidden among population of humans who had no magic. We had our government and money and everything - and countless of plants and animals which we hid from the rest of that world's population for their protection," he said. "And I think it was possible because the world was magical too - magic ran in the water, in the soil, in the air, everywhere. It nourished us, made us… possible. Us, the magical plants and animals, everything."

The younger man shrugged. "If you don't have a world like that, you can't do anything even if you have it in you do it. I've been doing magic since I was eleven years old, but I can barely cast a spell here," he said. "That's probably why you haven't been able to do anything. You usually need a wand to do anything anyway - it's pretty hard without one."

Arrom frowned, looking at him steadily, suspiciously. "If I'm one of your people, _why_ did I end up here? Without memories? You said your people are able to do that."

"In my world, yeah, they could. There's all sort of transportation spells that can make it seem like someone appeared out of nowhere - and there is spell for modifying memories and taking them away," Harry nodded, putting his wand away. "So, it would be possible. I don't know why someone would do that, though. Usually memory modifications are only used on normal, non-magical people to keep them from knowing about magic."

"And you have the right to decide who gets to know or not?" Arrom asked, scowling.

"It's human nature to fear what they don't understand, and hate it - so it's easier all around if they just didn't know about us," Harry said. "That was the popular belief anyway. I wasn't there deciding the rules, that was just the way it was. I don't think that's why you would be left without memories, though. In my world at least it didn't work like that - magical people could sometimes come around the memory erasing."

"Why then?" Arrom asked, a little more forcefully than he maybe should have. "If I'm one of your… your magical people, why did they take my memories away, why did they abandon me here without an explanation?"

The young man jerked back a little, and Arrom sat back down awkwardly, guiltily. Harry looked at him for a moment before swallowing. "I don't… I don't know. But, uh…." the young man trailed away before coughing and continuing. "Okay. In my world memory charms weren't used against magical people, not normally. There's two cases though when I know they were used. First there was this guy who used it to steal other people's accomplishments and make it seem like they were his - he wrote books and got famous for it," he said awkwardly. "The other time was when dark wizard - a criminal, a bad guy, really, really bad guy - interrogated someone and took their memories of it so that he wouldn't be caught."

"So… someone either stole my skills and accomplishments, or some bad guy interrogated me and then left me here to hide that he did it?" Arrom asked, scowling.

"Maybe? I don't know - I don't… I wish I did. I'd help you if I could. Maybe I might be able to - I have something I might be able to use, but it won't work here, and…" Harry trailed away and shook his head. "Think of it this way; whatever happened and whoever did it, they left you _here_ instead of, say, killing you or leaving you into a barren planet. You're alive. You're… relatively comfortable," he said, nodding around them. "It could be worse."

Arrom frowned. "Worse than knowing who you are?"

"Yes. You could be in pain," the young man said matter-of-factly.

The elder male frowned, thinking about it. It was fair point. "You said that magical people can regain their memories," he said after a moment. "Do you think, if I'm one of them, that I could…?"

Harry hesitated and then nodded. "I don't know if it would work here, though. You can recover from obliviate by couple of ways as far as I can remember - by being seeing and experiencing what you've known and forgotten and having that stuff remind you, though that's not always reliable. Then there are some magical treatments, mind healing and such. I don't know exactly how that works, but I think being around magic would probably help."

"Around you, you mean?" Arrom asked, giving him a suspicious look and thinking about Zira.

"I don't think I alone would do the trick - but the Willow might," Harry murmured. "The Willow has more magic than I do - near it is the only place I can reliably perform magic too."

"The Willow?"

"It's… a really long story. It's how I got there," the younger man shook his head.

"So, I would have to go with you?" Arrom asked, resting his elbows on his knees and giving the other a look. "In order to regain my memories. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"

Harry shrugged awkwardly, and didn't look at him, instead he twiddled with his wooden tool. "I, uh… I've been looking for four years now. I though when I'd finally find people like me, there would be more of them - that I'd find a place where _I_ could stay. I didn't think I'd find just one, so I don't… I don't really have any idea where to go from here," he admitted, and put the wand away. "But now I at least know that there might be some hope that one day I might find the rest."

Shaking his head, the younger man stood up. "I'm going to collect some more stories - I think I will stay on this planet for couple more days. You, uh… just think about what I said. Decide whatever you want."

Arrom looked at him steadily for a moment, until the younger man flushed slightly and turned to leave, looking anxious. "If it's true… You've looked for years and you'd just let me stay here and go on like I have - even if I was the only other person like you in the galaxy?"

The younger man frowned and then glanced at him. "If it's just the two of us, then it wouldn't make any difference, would it?" he asked, with a small, sad smile. When Arrom had no answer for that, Harry shook his head and left, leaving the elder man to think about what he had said - and what it meant for him.

x

While Arrom thought and contemplated, mulling over ever world Harry had said and trying to figure out what it meant, the younger man - magical man - wandered around the village like he had, still collecting stories. For a while Arrom wondered why he bothered, if he thought Arrom was like him - but then he realised. Even if Arrom was like him, it didn't change much - Harry still had no where to go, no trail to follow, because without his memories Arrom had little to nothing to offer to him, except for maybe some hope and the potential of finding something someday in the future.

Of course, if Arrom remembered, it would change everything. Maybe for both of them. Unless of course Harry was wrong, and Arrom wasn't one of his people…

But if he was… if he was, then it meant that he had _magic_. He didn't yet know what that meant exactly, but he had heard some old stories and children's fairytales and such to imagine. And what had Harry said? Change the shape and size of things, their colour - make things fly? Then there was the wand had done, the heating of the wand tip, and the glow Harry had produced. He might be able to do all of those things - maybe even more. And… and if he remembered his life, remembered actually being able to do those things, then he might also remember their people - his and Harry's, where ever they were. They could go _home_.

Arrom thought that word hard and long, but the only image it produced was that of his tent. He couldn't even imagine what sort of world could magical humans live in, what it would be like. And he couldn't imagine himself there, living in that sort of place. All tat he could see in his mind was the tent and the items he knew, and the Azul who had taken him in. Nothing else.

Harry had said that being around magic might make him remember. Arrom had no way of knowing whether or not he was telling the truth, but the fact that he was letting Arrom think it through and wasn't giving any ultimatums said something. But then, it might also say that he was simply better at trickery than Zira.

After some time of thinking, Arrom gave up the attempt of trying to solve the whole thing by himself, and went to Shamda. The old man listened to his explanation about the talk he had had with Harry, before spending a moment in thought as he prepared the tea for them.

"It does sound suspicious," the old man finally said. "And it is strange. Young man like Harry the Potter alone, trading fresh fruit like he did and collecting stories. Who can tell whether or not a man is telling the truth without witnessing the effect of his words, one way or another?" he shook his head, offering a cup to Arrom. "However, I sense no ill will or deceit from him."

Arrom nodded, warming his fingers against the side of the cup. He hadn't really thought that either. Harry was oddly talkative, but as far as Arrom could tell, he had his feelings close to the surface - they showed in his face. "If what he says is the truth…" he started and hesitated, staring at the cup. "What if I have powers?"

"Everyone has powers, Arrom. Power of story telling for one. Or power of observation, of feeling, of understanding," Shamda said somewhat chidingly. "It's true that I haven't ever truly believed in existence of humans with such powers as Harry the Potter boasts, but there have always been stories of magic - and always shall be. And all stories have seed of truth in them, some bigger than others. If it turned out to be true, I wouldn't be surprised."

The younger man sighed. "Should I go with him?" he asked quietly.

"That I can't decide for you, my young friend," the elder man said, taking a sip of his own tea. "Whether you want to go with him and risk security for discovery, or whether you want to remain here and try remember on your own… it's a difficult choice to make. Especially knowing as little as we do of Harry the Potter." Shamda hummed resonating and then lifted his eyebrows. "Maybe you should ask to see the vessel Harry the Potter arrived here on, the vessel you would be living in if you went with him? Some of the village men could come with you, to make sure nothing foul will take place."

Arrom nodded and glanced up. "You think he would let us see?"

"It should do no harm to ask," Shamda said calmly, and took another sip of his tea.

When Arrom headed out in order to find Harry and ask him, he found the young man sitting not far from Shamda's tent with couple of elder Azul men, who were joyously telling some story they heard in their childhood. Harry was grinning along with them even while quickly writing the story down. For a moment Arrom considered approaching them, but he decided against it, letting them finish the story and instead going to see Khordib to see if he would accompany him to Harry's vessel - if the young traveller would consent to showing it.

After getting Khordib's promise and the promise that the man would gather some of the others to accompany them, Arrom returns to see if Harry and the elders were finished. They seemed to be, Harry was standing and exchanging what looked like words of parting before turning away. The young man glanced around before noticing Arrom looking. For a moment he stood still, just staring back, before putting his papers and charcoal away and walking closer.

"Arrom?" he asked carefully.

"I want to see the vessel you came here on," the elder man said promptly. "If I go with you, I'll be living on it, right? I need to see it before I make the decision."

Harry blinked before pushing his odd jewellery higher on his nose. "Sure," he agreed slowly. "Just that… it's not actually a _vessel_. Well, not in the literal sense of the word."

"Well, whatever it is," Arrom nodded, relaxing a little. "Khordib and some others will come with us."

Now the younger man looked a bit awkward, glancing around uneasily. "Alright," he said, though he looked like he wanted to do the exact opposite. "We'll have to walk then," he murmured.

Arrom frowned, now confused. He had thought that Harry would object to the other people - but it was the walking that bothered him? "Walk? What other way did you think we'd go?"

"If it was just two of us, I could've Apparated, but I can't take more than one other person with me, and I don't think I have it in me to do several trips," Harry answered. "It's bit of a way from here."

"But you don't mind the others coming?" the elder man asked.

"Not really - there's no harm to it," the other answered, shrugging his shoulders. "It's just… four hour's walk," he added, sighing. "It's going to take whole day."

Arrom nodded slowly, wondering why the other had landed the vessel so far away. "I'll tell the others to be prepared, then," he murmured. "When will you be ready to go?"

"I'll be ready as soon as you are," Harry promised.

x

It wasn't actually four hour's walk, Arrom found pretty soon after they set out, Him, Harry, Khordip, Allan and Okhara. For Harry it had no doubt taken four hours - but Harry was a slow walker, taking his time to look around and not really even trying to make it fast. With Arrom and the others urging him he did walk a little bit more briskly, but every now and then he would get distracted by something and slow down again to investigate.

"It's just that I don't get to be on planets that often," the young man explained a little bit defensively, while fingering a dried up winter flower he had found, hidden in a leafless, slumbering bush.

In the end, they made the journey in less than three hours, arriving to a place Arrom himself hadn't seen in his single moon on the planet, but which Khordib and the others knew. It was a small lake, surrounded by hibernating trees and bushes that was a little frozen around the edges and, according to Khordib, would freeze completely soon. "We used to get our water from here in the beginning, before we found the watering hole," he said, as they approached the rocky shore.

"Why are we here?" Allan, Khordib's cousin and one of their only hunters, asked while fingering his bow. "I don't see any vessels."

"That's because the Willow is hidden," Harry answered, dropping from the higher bank to the shore and approaching the water line. He glanced around, before following the shore to the left, where they could see some bigger rocks, leading into the water. "Stand back," he said, before jumping across the rocks and to the furthermost of them.

For a moment, nothing happened, and there was nothing but the cool, calm lake and hint of fog lingering about its surface. In the distance, the perpetual storm rumbled, threatening them with another bout of rain. Awkward and wondering what he was really doing, Arrom tied his scarf a little tighter around his neck, before pulling the hood of his blue over cloak up. It was chillier here, than it was in the village.

The water's surface rippled, and little further away in the lake, something shimmered. Arrom couldn't see it immediately, it was too far and his eyes were poor, but he could tell the exact moment the others saw something - their gasps echoed over the water's surface. Then whatever it was solidified, and he could see it too - and even at the distance, he could recognise a shape. He had never before seen an island, but he knew that was it the moment he saw it - though that was nowhere near as impressive, as the great tree dominating the small island with it's extensive form.

"This is the Willow," Harry said with hint of pride and sadness and something else, but Arrom was too amazed by the great tree to try and discern it. While all other trees around them were naked and bare, their leaves covering the ground around them, this tree, thicker and taller than the others here, was green and lively - and by the looks of it, partially in bloom too.

"T-that is your space ship?" Khordib asked, amazed.

"Like I said, it's not exactly a vessel," Harry said, and glanced over his shoulder to them. "I'm going to do something a little strange now, so don't freak out," he said before pulling the wooden tool he had shown Arrom out of his bag.

Strange didn't quite cover it. Harry kneeled on the water line and mumbled something, waving the wand repeatedly and mumbling again. Eventually whatever he was trying to do actually happened, and even Arrom with his blurry sight was amazed. It was like arrow had shot out from Harry - arrow of ice that froze the lake's surface where it touched, and made its way directly to the small island with a single tree. The result was an ice bridge as thick as a man was tall.

"There, now we can cross over - just watch your step, it's going to be slippery," Harry said, and completely unaware or uncaring of the looks of complete shock the others gave him, he gingerly stepped onto the ice bridge and then started making his way across.

"Arrom?" Khordib asked, when Harry was half way across. He sounded as breathless and wide eyed as Arrom felt. "Do you think it is safe?"

"I don't know," Arrom answered honestly, and after a moment of hesitation he too stepped onto the ice bridge. "It feels solid," he said, and then started making his way slowly across, finding the bridge indeed slippery, but very firm. Behind him he could hear the others stepping forward as well, as he headed towards the island.

And the closer he got, the more impressive it became. The island was small, about the size of the village square, and that only seemed to make the tree more impressive. As he approached it, he saw that what he had thought to be blooms weren't. The tree's branches and leaves hung about it loosely and idly, like curtains, and from under them he could see the heavily hanging colourful fruits that grew on the lower branches - the same fruits Harry had bartered in the village.

Arrom was so amazed by the way the tree looked, that he didn't _feel_ it until he was almost on the island. It was a resonating feeling, almost like thunder, distant and strong but without a sound - a steady, continuous hum in the corner of his awareness. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he was absolutely certain that it was the great tree making the hum - and the closer he got, the stronger it became until it seemed to take over every other sound Arrom had.

Before Arrom realised it, he was on the small island, and across it, kneeling at the trees roots and reaching out to touch the thick trunk. It felt incredibly, beautifully _alive_ under his palms, and something knotted inside him released, making his shoulders slump with a feeling that felt like relief.

"You can feel it," Harry said beside him, crouching next to him and resting his hand beside Arrom's. He barely whispered the words, but they _sounded_ loud because of the exhilarated emotion he seemed to coat the words with. "It can feel you too. It's reaching for you."

"What is it?" Arrom asked, whispering back because speaking any louder seemed wrong.

"The Willow. In my world trees like these were called Whomping Willows because they could whack a person or anything else that came near," the younger man chuckled, stroking the tree's dark bark. "This one is a bit different. It grew on a magicless world, mostly from my blood, feeding on something out of that world - and it hasn't really done that much Whomping. So, I just call it the Willow."

"It's… it's magical," Arrom more stated than asked - it was obvious to him. It was on his fingertips. In the roots under his knees.

"Yes," Harry agreed and glanced up as the other men approached them

"How… how are there so many fruits growing from it?" Khordib asked with breathless awe, looking up. Arrom glanced up as well, and saw that there were indeed many fruits growing in the lower branches of the Willow. Yellow ones, orange ones, green ones, purple ones, red ones, big ones, small ones - and berries and nuts and so many other things he couldn't quite see.

"How can one tree bear so much fruit?" Okhara asked quietly. "Is it trickery?"

"In a sense. It's because of a technique called grafting - taking branches from other trees and attaching them to another one. It normally doesn't work with trees that are too different - they usually need to be of the same family - but the Willow is special," Harry answered, standing up and then toeing his sandals off. As they watched, he climbed the Willow's trunk nimbly, until he reached one of the branches and could pluck one of the fruits from it.

Arrom caught the fruit automatically, when Harry dropped it towards him. "It's real, see it for yourself," the young man said, and Arrom looked down to the green fruit in his hands. "It's how I survive the trips between planets - the Willow provides more than enough food for me," Harry added, dropping back down again. "It was the Willow's idea," he added, patting the tree trunk and smiling proudly.

There was a moment of quiet, as Arrom and the other just stared at the fruit and then the tree, too bewildered and too amazed to say anything. It wasn't until few moments later that Arrom noticed that there were other things than just the tree on the island. There was two tents there, and carefully arranged stone bowl between them, apparently made for making a fire in a way that it wouldn't harm the tree's roots. There was also large wooden tub not far from them, filled to the brim with clear water with a table of items beside it. There were also other tables, and trunks and buckets and even some barrels here and there across the island, along with some benches. It was a camp site even better lived than the Azul village - longer lived. Unlike the Azul village, where you could see everything could be easily packed and taken away, this was the camp of someone with no intention of moving.

"You live here?" Arrom asked, feeling like he ought to stand up and look around, but unable to leave the tree's roots.

"For four years," Harry nodded. "It's fairly simple, I know, but it's comfortable enough. The trips between planets are pretty long. If you… well, there's space for more tents, if it gets to that," he added.

Arrom nodded - he could almost see it, he could _imagine_. His tent would easily fit among Harry's tents, along with any other items he would bring with him. There would be no where near as much space as there was in the village, but it would still be comfortable.

"I don't understand," Allan said after a moment, sounding disbelieving. "This island can go to space?"

"Yes," Harry nodded. "It's hard to explain. What you saw before, when the Willow was invisible and came into a view? That was a shield. When the Willow goes to space, the shield will keep the air in and the cold out. And beneath us," he crouched down, patting the dirt. "There is something. I am not entirely sure what it is, but it's the reason why the Willow could take root in the first place - it's special. Space ship, maybe, made from something that is almost like magic. The Willow's roots go straight through the ship, and it can use the ship's systems."

"But it's a _tree_," Allan argued.

"Yes," Harry agreed, like not hearing the objection in the man's voice.

Arrom blinked at them, and turned his attention to the Willow again. He could feel the echo of truth in Harry's voice, and as he rested his hand against the tree once more, he could feel it there. It wasn't just a _tree_ - it was so much more. He couldn't really doubt Harry's words anymore, because he could feel it humming in the tree - the knowledge, the power, the sheer capability. He could also feel the incredible vastness of the tree's awareness and understanding. It couldn't just _go_ into space, but it could _understand it_. And though Arrom couldn't quite understand it himself, just feeling how someone, something else did was incredible.

He swallowed, and withdrew his hand. He knew then that he'd go with Harry, go with the Willow. The idea of being left behind when they rouse and flew was almost painful now - being left without this sensation of belonging was heartbreaking.

All those times he had wondered what his home would be like, he had never expected to find the feeling so heady.

"So?" Harry asked, looking at him steadily over his facial jewellery. "What do you think?"

Arrom nodded. "I think I need to do some packing," he said, and Harry smiled cautiously in answer.

xx

I wanted to do a SG x HP crossover less about technology and more about the magic, so, here we go. This will have all together 7 to 10 chapters and it shall be slash.

My apologies for possible grammar errors and such.


	2. Chapter two

Warnings; Slash, amnesia, OOCness, Spoilers. AU version of SG1 season seven, starting from episode "Fallen". Also, illogical science ship-creation.

**Astral synthesis**

**Chapter two**

No one in the Azul tribe seemed truly sad to see him go - it seemed the opposite mostly, though Arrom knew better than to take insult of it. The nature of the tribe was that of travel after all, coming and going, and though they had been staying in the ruins for a great while, long enough to call them _home_, they knew the nature of life was to move. So he knew that they weren't happy to see _him_ leave, as much as they were simply happy for him because he had a new place to go.

"In truth, I never really thought you'd stay," Shamda said, while giving him a box of his favourite tea as a parting gift. "You move more than we do, faster - you're more of a traveller. I thought that one day you would simply feel the wanderlust grab you and you would move on, regardless of whether you regained your memories or not. This, though, is maybe better."

"Maybe," Arrom nodded, accepting the box. "I'm still a bit bewildered about this all, to tell you the truth. I… it doesn't seem quite real yet," he admitted, glancing towards Harry who was helping Khordib and Fasira pack Arrom's tent. The young man had been going back and forth between the village and the Willow by using a magical art he called _Apparation_ - taking Arrom's things there much faster than anyone would've managed on foot. It had made Arrom understand his aversion towards walking - Apparation was so much handier, after all.

"I don't blame you," Shamda murmured, shaking his head. "Did he really make a bridge from ice?"

Arrom smiled thinly. "He did," he said. "And he says that I might be able to do it too, with some practice. I might be able to apparate too, like he does."

The old man shook his head, more out of amazement than any objection. "I never thought I witness another myth growing right before my eyes, not in my late age," he murmured. "When the False God fell, I thought I had seen the greatest thing I ever would, but now… to witness this… Oh, what a pity it is that I have so few years left to share it."

"You're not that old, Shamda, there's still time," Arrom answered, and watched how Harry took the bundle of oil-skin, curtains and the wooden frames, before disappearing with a soft sound, to take them to the Willow island. Arrom swallowed, wondering what it would feel like, to be able to do it himself - to instantly cross a distance that was miles and miles long. Fantastic didn't quite cover it.

"We are almost done," Khordib said, approaching them after bundling the last of Arrom's things - his bed - for Harry's next apparation. "Fasira has something for you, before you go," he added, and turned towards his wife who had visited their tent and was now coming back with cloth scroll in her hands.

"I made this for our first child - but there is still time for me to make another one," Fasira said, handing the cloth over. "I thought it might remind you of us, when you cross the stars."

Arrom accepted the scroll and after a moment of studying the carefully woven fabric, he unrolled it. It was a Saga - a tapestry containing the history of the Azul, starting with their slavery under the False God and the False God's fall, ending with the Azul travelling free. Arrom swallowed, tracing the fabric with his fingertips. The images were beautifully woven, surrounded by hues of blue and indigo - which for the Azul symbolised their freedom.

For Arrom it symbolised a little more. Every Azul had a Saga - they were either made by mothers for their children, or handed down by the elderly to their grandchildren, if there was no one to weave one. Arrom had never had one, obviously, as he hadn't been born into the tribe. He had never thought he would get one either.

"I can't accept this," he said, rolling the tapestry gently.

"Please, take it. I can make a new one - I have already started," Fasira said gently, putting her hands behind her back so that she couldn't take the tapestry if he tried to hand it over. "Hang it above your bed and remember us."

"Take it, son," Shamda nodded. "And maybe once you find your people, tell them about us."

Arrom swallowed and as Khordib gave him a smile and a nod, he sighed and held the tapestry scroll tightly to his chest. "Thank you," he said. "I will."

Little further away from them, Harry re-appeared, holding in his arms a large satchel. Glancing around, he spotted Arrom and the others, and quickly made his way to them.

"I, uh. Have something for you," he said to Khordib, Fasira and Shamda, lowering the satchel to the ground and opening it. It was full of fruits, berries, nuts and probably everything else the Willow produced. "It's not much, but I thought you might like it. Also -" he quickly took out a smaller satchel from his hip, and pried it open. It was full of small white seeds. "These are the seeds of the Willow," he explained. "We leave them in every planet - they probably won't take root, without any magic around, but I would… I would really appreciate if you would take them."

"We would be honoured to," Shamda said grandly, accepting the satchel. "We will try and plant them where they might take grow. And we appreciate the fruit too - the tribe will have a feast today."

Harry smiled carefully and nodded before looking at Arrom. "I'm getting a bit tired after all the trips back and forth, so I think the next one will be the last for now. So…"

Arrom nodded. "Thank you," he said. "Can you give me a moment?"

"Sure. I'll just wait over there, okay?" the younger man nodded to the bundle of Arrom's beddings, and then left him alone with the Azul. Once he was out of hearing range, Arrom turned to face the people who had taken care of him during the last moon. Looking at them, he realised that he didn't know them even nearly as well as he would've liked at that moment. He didn't know if Shamda had any children, and he didn't know what Fasira and Khordib would name their child. He didn't know what planets hey had been born, what they had done before coming to the planet of the ruins, he didn't…

"I shall miss you," he said finally. "Thank you for all that you've done for me. I know you didn't need to, but you took care of me, you gave me a place, clothing, food… I will never forget that."

"Good. In absence of old memories, new ones should be made," Shamda nodded, reaching out and patting Arrom's shoulder. "Be a parrot, boy. Let the lizards laugh as much as they want, and just be a parrot."

Arrom smiled. "I've learned much from you," he said. "I'll be sure to remember it all."

"We know you will," Fasira said, stepping forward and hugging him. "Look ahead, Arrom. There's journey to take - paths to cross. Life isn't all about the past, be it good or bad or unknown."

"I'll remember that," Arrom promised with a small smile, and then clasped hands with Khordib. "Thank you," he simply said. "For everything."

The other man nodded. "Take care of yourself, Arrom," he said and stepped back.

Arrom nodded and, after moment spent still belonging in the circle of these three people who had been so kind to him, he turned away, detaching himself from the family they had been for him. He could feel them looking after him, watching him as he walked to Harry, but he didn't turn around. Everything that had needed to be said had been said. By turning around he would only make himself seem insecure and unprepared - and that would've reflected on them as well, as they had taught him to be whatever he now was.

"I'm ready," he said as he made it to Harry. The younger man looked at his face, before nodding and picking the bundle of Arrom's beddings from the ground.

"This might feel a little strange - the first time it happened to me, I nearly threw up. So, brace yourself," Harry warned, offering him his hand. Arrom hesitated before glancing at the spot where his tent and life had once stood. It was now clean - soon someone else might put their tent there, he knew. It looked oddly desolate.

But maybe departure was always like that.

"Okay," he said, holding the Saga tightly against his chest. Then he took Harry's hand, gripping the other's fingers firmly. "Let's go."

The young man nodded, giving him a moment to brace himself, and then the world spun wildly around them.

Arrom didn't throw up, but it was a near thing. The odd jump from one place to another was bad enough, spinning and squeezing and wholly unnatural, but the aftermath was even worse. His body objected to the whole event in strange belated way that nearly send him to his knees and forced him to swallow to keep the contents of his stomach in his stomach.

He only realised he was gripping Harry's hand with white knuckled tightness after the other carefully detached their hands.

"You can take a moment," Harry simply said, patting his upper arm awkwardly before walking past him to place the bedding bundle with the other of Arrom's possessions. The elder man took the offered moment gladly, until his stomach settled and he felt a little more steady, wondering if the usefulness of Apparation really outweighed the awful feeling of actually doing it - and if it would feel so bad if he would do it himself.

"Is it always like that?" he asked, glancing towards the younger man, who was now clearing some boxes and barrels to make room for Arrom's tent.

"It feels bad in the beginning - but after few times you get used to it. I barely even notice the nausea anymore," Harry answered, grunting as he lowered the barrel beside his own tent. "Do you think this is enough space?" he then asked, nodding to the small clearing.

Arrom glanced over it. "Let's try," he suggested, hoping he would feel better if he just moved around a little. Harry nodded in agreement, and after Arrom had gently set the Saga aside, they unwound the bundle of his tent, and begun setting it up. As they did, Arrom couldn't help but notice that his tent was quite a bit bigger than either one of Harry's.

"I only sleep in it," the younger man explained, nodding towards the smaller of his two tents while they set the frame work for Arrom's housing. "And the other one is for, well, it's the loo. Sort of. It's always been just me and the Willow here, so the entire island is my home - and I've never really needed walls or a roof atop my head here."

"You don't get cold? What about rain?" Arrom asked.

"The Willow maintains the temperature on the island - you should've noticed by now, it's warmer here than it's few feet away from here," Harry said, smiling. "And the Willow can shield me from the rain if I need it to." He glanced around. "Though now that there are two of us, privacy might be an issue. Maybe I should have tried to purchase one of the Azul tents…"

"Well, there's mine, so if we need privacy from each other, maybe it is enough," Arrom said. Harry nodded thoughtfully, and together they finished setting up the tent. After that, Arrom went about arranging the tent's interior, setting the curtains and then lying down the carpets and finally his bedding. While he did, the fact that the island and the air about it was warmer than the air outside it made itself clear - Arrom soon found himself sweating under his thick over cloak. It certainly explained why Harry wore such thin robes, he mused as he swiftly undressed the cloak.

"Do you think you're ready to go?" Harry asked, when he emerged from the tent, more or less finished. The younger man was sitting crouched by the Willow's roots, resting his hands on his knees slightly. "Me and the Willow are about done here, so we can leave any time now."

"I suppose there is nothing really left to do," Arrom said, feeling a little nervous but trying not to show it. "How does this work? Leaving a planet, I mean?"

"Come here," Harry said, motioning him to join him. "We'll show you."

Arrom went, sitting down beside him. Harry took his hand and pressed it to the Willow's bark, pressing his own beside it. After a small, encouraging smile, Harry closed his eyes and frowned with concentration. After a moment, Arrom mimicked him - and then he could feel it. The surge of life inside the Willow shifted and changed - and Arrom's senses were drawn with it downwards, and into the island's soil through the Willow's roots. Beside him he could feel Harry, both in body and in energy, as they followed the roots to the metal heart of the island.

'_Here. See?'_ Harry asked, nudging and pointing. And Arrom could see. The Willow's roots were interwoven with strange, alien technology, rooted into its systems - and in control of them. Masterfully the Willow managed the energy flows inside the ship, turning one flow up and another down. Some mechanism below them awakened and turned on, and while a shield of what felt like shimmering silver surrounded the entire island in sphere of protective energy, the island's heart, the alien ship, started its engines.

There was a faint tremble running through the Willow and the entire island, and both the Willow and Harry were shivering with anticipation. Arrom watched and sensed, overcome by amazement, how the entire construction of metal, earth, tree and man shook free from the bonds of gravity, and lifted up from the lake's surface. It was strange and maybe a little silly to realise in such belated manner that the island had actually been floating on the lake's surface, and not at all attached to it's bottom, but Arrom knew now just how free the island was of any bonds.

'_The inside is full of water?'_ he asked, curious as he felt the Willow's roots at the edges of that water. The metal heart of the island had hollows inside it, pathways and corridors, and they were all now flooded.

_'The vessel is, yes,'_ Harry answered. _'The __Willow__ gets energy from space, but it needs water to live. Every planet we visit, we refill the vessel and while we travel in space, the __Willow__ drinks from that water.'_

_'That's why you landed so far from the village; it was the closest lake,'_ Arrom mused, and then he was distracted by the feel of their ascend. They were higher now, and going faster - and the shield of energy around them was feeling the strain as the planet's atmosphere and gravity fought against their escape. The Willow was adjusted to that and had felt it countless of times before, it wouldn't be slowed. As the storm clouds whirled around them, they rouse higher and higher until the air around them cooled and turned nearly frozen, and still they went higher until…

Arrom opened his eyes, and turned to look behind him. He could see the shield around the island, around the Willow, keeping the air inside it and the cool emptiness of space outside. And beyond the shield, he could see the planet they had just left, still close enough to seem massive, still close enough to have a horizon. Enthralled, Arrom withdrew from the tree and walked to the edge of the circular island, to watch the planet past the shield. It was incredible - with few steps he could just fall back to it, and yet he was standing on grass and moss, with a tree root under the sole of his boot.

And all around the planet there were thousands and thousands of stars.

"Beautiful, isn't?" Harry asked, joining him at the edge. "Four years I've travelled, but I never get used to this sight either."

"That is where I lived. I never realised it was so… so big," Arrom murmured, crouching down and trying to see where they had came from. "We are too high to see the ruins anymore, are we?"

"Actually, not really. The ruins cover nearly the entire continent below us," Harry answered and pointed at the clouds below. "That is where we landed. You can't see it, but the lake is there and, not far from it, the village."

Arrom shook his head, amazed. Shamda had always said that they were mere drops in the vast ocean of the universe, but he had never realised how true it was. "Where… where will we go to next?" he asked, glancing up to the younger man.

"To the nearest habitable planet the Willow knows," Harry answered, peering up and at the space around the planet, at the stars. "That way, I think," he added, pointing. "It will take some time to get there, though. Are you ready for the next part?"

"Next part?" Arrom asked, now a little worried. Harry smiled and glanced behind them, at the Willow. The great tree shuddered, its leaves rustling as if in wind except the air didn't move. Harry nodded upwards, and Arrom quickly looked up to see that the space above them had a odd breach in it - and the next thing he knew, they had rushed upwards and right into the breach.

"Hyperspace," Harry explained, while Arrom stared, open mouthed at the whirl of ethereal hues of purple and blue all around the island, chaotic and calm all at the same time. "It's a way to travel faster through space than would normally be possible - or so we've gathered."

"How… how long will we stay here?" Arrom asked, trying not to look as anxious as he felt about the odd, overwhelming display of colour all around them

"Couple of weeks," Harry said, giving him a sympathetic look. "It… took some time for me to get used to it too. Come on," he said, offering the elder man his hand. "How about I give you a tour around the island and show you what's what, and maybe then we can see to making something to eat? Have you ever had fresh fruits?"

"Not that I remember," Arrom answered, taking the hand and letting himself be pulled to his feet.

"Well, no time like the present," Harry said, and quickly begun distracting Arrom from the whirl of colour around them.

The island seemed smaller now, that it was the only piece of earth around. With twenty steps Arrom could cross it from side to side, excluding the small detour one had to make to get around the Willow that stood directly in the middle of the island. Still, for such a small space, Harry had managed to fit plenty to it.

Aside from the tent for _loo_ - which Arrom found to be extremely handy thing to have, a little embarrassed that he hadn't even considered the necessity of such a thing - there were areas for every physical necessity. Harry had separate table and area for making food, with the table covered with tools and pots and pans he used for cooking - though, since all the food they had was fresh fruits, berries and nuts, Arrom wasn't sure if cooking was actually necessary. There were some other small spaces around the island, that were meant for different tasks - like spot where Harry apparently contemplated, and another where he liked to write and go through his texts, and third where he apparently mended his clothing.

The most important aspect of the island, though, seemed to be the tub. "Well, I call it barrel," Harry said, leaning to the edge of the large wooden container, filled with water. Arrom marvelled the simplistic tub for a moment - if he was right about its dimensions, one could stand in it and the water would reach nearly one's chest. Harry smiled awkwardly. "There are spells for cleaning, but this is… this is important."

"But where do you get the water? After a bath, you have to replace it, don't you?" Arrom asked. "Do you share the Willow's water, or…?"

"Not really. Sure, I empty and refill the tub on every planet that has water, but not while I'm in space. There's a spells to clean it after it's been used, it's handier that way," Harry said, taking out his wand. "And there's spell for this," he added, touching the tip of the wooden tool against the water, murmuring something under his breath. Immediately, the water begun to steam lazily, and when Arrom touched the water, he found it not only pleasantly warm, but nearly hot.

"When you spent a month or two in space, you really appreciate a good hot bath, believe me," Harry grinned, putting the wand away. "You can use it when ever you like - just tell me, and I'll clean and heat the water for you."

Arrom promised to do so. The concept was novel to him - the Azul were sparing with their water and he had never seen so much used for mere bathing, but with Harry's talents it seemed understandable. "Can you teach me the water heating and cleaning spell?" he asked curiously.

"Eventually, yeah. But first you need to learn the basics," Harry answered. "It took me years to learn these spells - I had to start out small. You too."

Arrom nodded, a little disappointed but understanding. It wasn't like one could learn to weave a Saga after learning to hold a needle, after all. "So, if I need to start small, what will I start with?"

Harry thought about it for a moment and then nodded. "Levitation seems about right," he said. "It's simple enough."

The elder man frowned. "Levitation is simple?" he asked with disbelief.

"Compared to transfiguration and combat spells? Yes," Harry smiled. "You want to try now?"

Arrom cast a glance past the wooden tub and to the edge of the island and its spherical shield, where the Hyperspace whirled downwards. "Yes," he said, drawing his eyes away and trying not to shudder. "Now seems a good time."

Harry nodded, and Arrom's tutelage with magic begun.

x

When he was not distracted by the continuous flow and whirl of colour and the feeling like they're endlessly rising through space, trying to learn magic, or trying to settle into his new and strange life, Arrom noticed new things - about himself and about Harry.

He found that he liked pears more than he liked apples and that though he liked lemons he wasn't too fond of oranges or mandarins - and he could go through entire bowl of cherries with one sitting, but he didn't much care for plums. He also found he liked nuts quite a bit.

He also realised to his own relief that he wasn't as bothered by the lack of space or people as he had feared. He found himself missing the freedom of movement, of being able to just take a long walk, but it was rare as he was always either doing something that kept him busy - and if not, then he could lose hours by just staring at the whirls of colour around the Willow, and be content with that. It wasn't like there was nothing to do, in any case. If there was nothing to eat or fix or repair, there were spells to try and hear about and, if he was lucky, to learn.

He learned more about Harry, though, than about himself or even about magic. The longer Arrom was alone with the younger man, the better he understood the effect the years alone had had on Harry. The young man most likely controlled his own behaviour vigorously when they were in the village of the Azul, but here, with no one but Arrom to see, he let himself go. And as a result, Harry sometimes talked to himself, he often broke out to humming odd, stuttering melodies - and sometimes even singing scattered songs, half of the words forgotten. More often than not, though, Arrom found Harry talking to the Willow - chattering away about everything and nothing, holding one sided conversation with the skill of someone who had done so hundreds of times before.

"…makes me wish I had listened a little better. The songs the hat sung were always kind of weird, but they were also pretty nice - melodic, whatever. Not that they were actually all that _good_, to be honest - too much stuff crammed into them - but they were original. And meaningful," Arrom found Harry saying to the tree, little after waking up in the second day. "I never heard that many songs, now that I think about it. I heard more muggle songs, really, and I've forgotten those too. I can't even remember any of the Weird Sister's songs - and they were playing those all the time in the fourth year. Hm. I think one of them had something about a cauldron…"

Arrom didn't know whether to feel sorry for the younger man or embarrassed for his sake every time he caught the other doing something like that. Harry would flush and stutter and look away, not really sure how to explain, and Arrom could really say nothing. Not even that he understood. Because while he _did_, he also didn't. Being alone as long as Harry had been, well. It went beyond his comprehension. Harry had been alone for years and years, while Arrom could only remember one measly moon back.

Aside from the awkwardness of odd habits and knowing or not knowing, Arrom found they got along with each other somewhat well, though. Arrom wasn't too talkative most of the time, so Harry's awkward, nervous chatter covered both their need for discussion. And in truth, their interactions were fairly few, usually involving magic as Harry urged him to try the wand, try this spell, try that spell. Arrom had yet to be able to cast single one right, but with each try the younger man seemed happy with his effort and process - the one time Arrom had managed to make the Willow's dried, fallen leaf flutter through the air had made him nearly laugh out loud with joy.

Other than that, they tried to give each other space. They ate separately, both fetching their own preferred fruits, berries and nuts from the Willow's branches when they got hungry, eating the way they preferred to eat. Arrom usually just picked a fruit and ate it straight, more than satisfied with the natural flavour of whatever he was eating at the time. Harry, who had probably gotten used to simply eating the fruits raw years ago, spent some time preparing his meals, making elaborate salads and sometimes going as far as getting a small fire going to cook - though the fire he used was magical one that didn't use any wood, probably for the Willow's benefit.

"I've been thinking of trying to make an oven so that I can bake something, but I've never gotten around to actually make it," the young man admitted, after spending few hours making apple jam, which he then ate mostly straight. "I'm not sure how to make one anyway. But some bread once every now and again would be nice, you know? Don't know where I would get the flour, though…"

Harry made such comments fairly often, saying that he had been thinking of this or that, or that he had had a thing like this or thing like that once, and so forth. Arrom listened to all of them, but he was never sure how to answer. He hadn't experienced enough to say anything like that himself - he hasn't made enough decisions or had enough choices. It was a little awkward to have someone share their thoughts and opinions so freely with him in any case - even the Azul hadn't been so open with him - and he was never sure what he was supposed to answer. Usually he could only listen silently and just nod.

He wondered a little about what kind of decision he had made, when he had joined Harry - if it had been right one, if he was happy with it. Sometimes it all just seemed so strange that he couldn't help but long for the life he had had with the Azul. It had been confused and somewhat bitter to be without memories, without hope, but he had understood it - and it had been calm. With Harry, everything seemed strange and foreign and not at all calm, even when they were quiet for hours upon end, both lost in their own thoughts.

Then, when three days had gone by - if they could be called that, as there was no night or day in the blur of purple and blue - Harry reminded him why he had originally considered it.

"Do you want to start trying to recover your memories now?"

It seemed to come out of nowhere - and, feeling a little embarrassed, Arrom realised he had forgotten all about it. After he had seen the Willow and felt it, everything had become about magic and energy and being connected to it - of not being left without it. After that, he had been too concerned with trying to find his niche on the island, of coming to terms with it. The urge to recover his memories had become somewhat secondary to everything else.

"Why didn't you offer before?" Arrom asked, to hide his own lapse of memory.

"I thought you wanted some time to settle in," Harry shrugged, and motioned him to join him by the Willow's roots. "Come on. Let's see what we can do."

Arrom joined him, and somewhat awkwardly rested beside him as Harry closed his eyes and fell to the connection with the tree. Harry did it very easily, Arrom now knew - the younger man didn't really even need to touch the Willow and he could fall into the tree's sentience. Arrom could sense it himself but he couldn't connect with it on his own - after few times of trying, he had realised that only Harry could pull him into the connection.

And now, as Arrom rested his head against the tree's trunk, Harry did just that, beaconing him towards him and drawing him into the hum and surge that was the Willow. Unlike the first time, when it had been about movement and function, going this way and doing that, this time the connection was calm. In the side, the Willow was taking them through the hyperspace, easily keeping them steady and in motion and safe from the harmful energies of the hyperspace. But in the same time, the Willow was also living and growing, it was making fruits and berries and nuts, providing them with food. And now, as Harry urged Arrom forward, the Willow surrounded them with its own, seemingly endless mind, welcoming them into its embrace.

_'Let's have a look then,'_ Harry said… or maybe it was the Willow, or Arrom himself - it was hard to tell where one ended and another begin. Arrom understood though, but the words and the intention behind it, even the means, and together they all turned on Arrom, to follow him into _his_ mind.

Arrom wasn't surprised to find his mind to be rather closed up, but Harry and the Willow both seemed bothered by it. They were used to the openness of their own connection, of there being no walls and no limits, but with Arrom's mind there was nothing _but_ limits. Everything, it seemed, was closed off behind walls and shields, hidden by locked, chained doors. _'Claustrophobic_,' was Harry's opinion, and Arrom found himself agreeing with the new, foreign term.

They roamed in the closed up spaces, trying to nudge the doors open and to reveal their secrets, but none of the lock ups-budged. _'Your memories are still there. Someone just closed them from you,'_ Harry thought with equivalent of knocking his knuckles against one of Arrom's countless memory blocks. _'But I think they aren't permanent. See, here, feel that?'_

Arrom didn't know _what_ he felt, but he did feel it. Each door had an opening - a key hole. _'I think these have been made so that when you would see certain things or hear certain words, the locks and the doors would start opening,' _Harry thought_. 'Whoever did this meant you to eventually make your way back home, or some place familiar, where you would begin to remember.'_

Arrom tried to hide it, but his frustration rang through the connection. _'Can't you open them?'_ he asked, nudging at Harry and the Willow. _'You have the power - I can feel it. You could.'_

_'And we could cause irreparable damage while doing it,'_ Harry answered sadly. _'These doors were made to open naturally and who ever did it was really good. I wouldn't even know where to begin making something like this. If we force them open, it might hurt you. It might damage the memories - you might really lose them.'_

Arrom almost growled with disappointment - and then jerked back, both mentally and physically, as he felt Harry shifting closer. _'Hey, now you at least know that there is a way. Isn't that something, at least?'_

_'I'm… I'm sorry. I guess I wished for more,'_ Arrom answered, awkward - he could feel the other's sympathy, like a blanket wrapping around him. It was comforting - and more than slightly unnerving. _'Can we stop this, now?'_

_'Sure,'_ Harry said, baffled by his unease but willing to comply. He and the Willow both withdrew, leaving Arrom alone in his mind - and in his body.

"Will I ever get used to that?" he asked, opening his eyes and blinking, a bit disoriented.

"Probably not. I never have," Harry answered, pulling his odd face jewellery off, and rubbing his eyes. "I think your magic was sealed like your memories were - maybe all your skills are. We probably activated the key for that one accidentally, when I showed you magic and started teaching you - or maybe when I side-along apparated you."

Arrom frowned slightly. "You think it's possible? Locking away something like magic?" he asked worriedly.

"I have no idea how, but it felt like it might be something like that - it's still not all out, that's probably why you can't cast spells properly," Harry mused, and lifted the jewellery back to his face. "Though the fact that you're using my wand probably doesn't help - wands tend to be picky and mine chose me, not you."

The elder man hummed, having heard about wands from Harry before - when the younger man had started teaching levitation charms to him. "If we really did accidentally unleash my magic - if we used a key, and unleashed it naturally - then that would mean I don't actually have to go to… to the place I'm from to remember," he said thoughtfully.

"Without knowing what the keys might be, that's not much help for us," Harry pointed out.

"But, but we can theorise," Arrom said, snapping his fingers as a thought came to him. "We know _something_, we can draw upon that. We know that there was magic involved in the way I lost my memories, and we know that being around magic has opened one of the locks. We also know that my people probably knew about other worlds. They left me on another planet after all. They would… they probably know about space. And they didn't use the chappa-ai to do it, so maybe they even have this." He motioned around them excitedly. "They might have space travel."

Harry blinked. He looked a little wide eyed, staring Arrom like he had never seen him before "Okay, that is something. What else?" he asked, motioning him to go on, still eying him oddly.

Realising that he had probably never talked so much in one go - or so excitedly - in Harry's presence, Arrom ducked his head a little. "Um. There must be significance in the world they left me - probably the ruins," he said awkwardly. "I thought I might know the symbols written in the ruins, I was trying to study them and remember when we met, when I gave you directions. I thought I might…"

"So, maybe your people know that language," the younger man nodded. "Pity we didn't know before - we could've taken piece of the ruins with us, something with writing in it."

"I uh… I wrote some of the symbols down before. I think I can remember most of them," the other said, getting up to his feet and heading to his tent to find the leather he had written on. It was half buried in a basket, and only after he got it out he remembered he had wiped the symbols away - but it didn't matter. He could write them again.

"Here," Harry said, stopping him before he could reach for his small stove to get some raw charcoal. The younger man was holding some of his papers, and the charcoal stick he had used to write the stories of the Azul. "Use this."

Arrom did, turning to his low table to write - and soon he found that the stick fit into his hand with incredible ease, finding a comfortable spot between his thumb and forefinger. The symbols came out easier too than before, as if aided by the charcoal or the paper, as if more familiar because of the way used to write them down. They seemed to flow out, now, easy as the rain. Arrom wrote sequences of the symbols, repeating some of them but letting it happen, feeling that trying to stop it would only hinder the process. Soon he had entire sheet of paper filled.

"Do you understand it?" Harry asked, leaning closer to see.

"No, but…my hand knows to how they're written," Arrom said, looking over the eighteen lines of text he had written. "And I think… I think these are words."

"So. Magic. Space travel. Language you can write but not remember," Harry murmured, crouching beside Arrom, who was sitting on his knees. "It's… interesting, but I'm not sure how we can use that."

"I think they might be connected," Arrom said, looking at him. "I can learn magic from you, maybe that will rouse something, spells I might've known. And I suppose I will have to keep on trying to write the language and maybe it will come to me."

"So, more or less what we've been doing so far? But that hasn't helped yet - aside from unlocking your magic," Harry mused. "I think we need something else."

"Well… do you know anything about space travel?" Arrom asked.

"Well, I know something," Harry answered, and glanced towards the entrance of Arrom's tent. Through the open flap, they could see some of the low hanging branches of the Willow, lazily swinging back and forth in non-existent wind. "And the Willow knows something too. But… I think I might have something else that might help you, though, how useful that will be…"

Mumbling to himself, Harry stood up and headed out of the tent, leaving Arrom blinking behind him. As the elder man followed, he could hear how the other rummaged through one of the many boxes on the island, looking for something. "Ha," Harry said, just as Arrom stepped out and into the blue hued glow of the hyperspace. The younger man was kneeling beside a chest, holding a book.

"When we left Earth, I bought lot of books - about plants and space and science and all that. I thought it might come in handy one day - but I never really bothered reading about most of it, since it's the Willow who takes care of the space travel aspect of our lives. But, you know," Harry showed the book's cover. It had an incredibly well crafted image of a planet on it. "It might be useful to you. Even if you can't read it, it has some pretty pictures in it."

Arrom accepted the book with a frown, looking at the text for a moment before flipping the book open. "When you left… earth?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's a long story," Harry shrugged. "Anyway, you can look through the books as much as you like. I'm not sure how useful they are, but I don't really need them myself, so… do whatever you like."

"I will," Arrom nodded, giving him a thoughtful look before concentrating onto the book.

x

When Arrom found himself understanding the language Harry's strange, smooth books were written it, it came out as odd non-surprise. He didn't even notice it until he had already read through the book about the basics of space, of planets and solar systems and asteroids and such - and even then he only noticed because he wanted to correct some of the mistakes in the book when it went to theorise about why Earth had life, and what space travel between stars would be like.

"I don't know - I just leafed through the book and suddenly understood it," Arrom said late to Harry, sketching the annotations he wanted to make into the book into a sheet of paper instead. "And I knew some of the things in it were wrong."

"I guess you unlocked something. Do you want to check what?" Harry asked, nodding towards the Willow. Arrom agreed, but only after finishing sketching the remarks on the paper about hyperspace windows and subspace and the power of artificially created singularities.

Later, when they rested against the Willow and wandered in Arrom's mind, Harry found two separate doors open. _'I think one is for the writing, and another is for the knowledge,'_ the younger man said, as they tested the edges of the opening. _'The knowledge feels a little strange, though.'_

_'Strange how?'_ Arrom asked, worried and curious and hoping they had finally found the key to restoring the rest of his memories.

_'It feels like… I don't know. Just feels strange. It feels a little like it's bouncing,'_ Harry answered a little helplessly. _'The knowledge of writing feels much more secure.'_

_'Maybe it means it's new, something I learned just before losing my memories?'_ the elder man asked.

_'Maybe,'_ Harry agreed, but he didn't sound certain at all.

The knowledge trickled into Arrom's head in strange spurts, making him realise how the shield around the Willow worked, and why they weren't breaking apart in hyperspace, what hyperspace was and how it was possible to create openings into it. He soon found himself leaving Harry, who had much more experience about space travel, into confusion as the knowledge rushed forward to explain their speed and trajectory and how it was possible for them to survive it all without actually being inside a ship of any sort - and how the shield around them was extremely masterfully made, more so than a normal ship would've been able to produce.

The knowledge left him marvelling the space around them even more than before. Before the hyperspace whirling past had just been a show of extraordinary colour, but now he understood what it was, what it meant. The hyperspace was mostly filled with energies, most of them he didn't understand, but all of which he found himself respecting greatly. He knew that greatest of power sources were ones trying to mimic the space around them - drawing upon its existence to artificially recreate it. Staring into the colours of hyperspace, Arrom could see those power sources, crystalline and beautiful. It was awe striking, all of it.

Eventually he also understood something else, something about the Willow - namely that he didn't understand. All the knowledge of space he gained and discovered mostly circled around facts and sciences, with hints of technology somewhere around the edges of it in forms of hyper drive engines and shield emitters. The Willow, though, was something his new knowledge could not explain.

"I want to know," Arrom said finally to Harry, kneeling at the Willow's roots and resting his hands against the bark, feeling the life and energy inside. "I understand the space around us now, I even know what it consists of, but nothing I know now explains the Willow. I need to… I think that if I know more, I might learn more - open more of my memory locks. If, if I know how the Willow grew, how it _lives_…"

Harry drummed the Willow's upraised root with his fingertips. "It's a long story. Do you want me to tell, or do you want to see?" he finally asked.

"Can I have both?" Arrom asked.

The younger man nodded slowly. "I suppose," he said, and turned to rest his back against the Willow like he usually did, when he communicated with the tree. "Come here," he said, and Arrom eagerly sat beside him, resting the back of his head against the bark, and willingly falling into the tree when Harry's mind nudged him.

It was different from their usually communion, though. There was a moment of familiarity, the Willow all around them, wide and growing and seemingly endless, and them, two small entities contained in the middle of it and yet breaking apart at the edges. Then Harry did something new, something completely novel, and suddenly Arrom found himself standing on sand - and then Harry was beside him, wearing his dark grey robes, his hair messily bound to his neck.

_'It's a memory - my memory to be exact,'_ the younger man said, standing beside him and motioning around them. All around there was sand in wide stretched, dried dunes - and above them there was the sun, pouring golden heat down upon them.

_'You can draw me into your memories?'_ Arrom asked, surprised.

Harry nodded. _'I'm going to show you how the __Willow__ grew.'_

Arrom stared, fascinated and a little worried, how Harry waved his arm and made the scene around them shift. Suddenly, there was another Harry there - younger, short haired, wearing different clothing, walking across the sand with something held in his hand. The younger Harry was sun tanned and slightly sweaty, probably from the heat - and the facial jewellery, exact same he still wore, was slipping down his nose.

_'Come on,'_ the actual Harry said, and together they followed the younger Harry as he stumbled across the sand until he made it to his destination. There was a small opening to ruins of some sort, half buried in the sand - though Harry didn't seem as interested about the ruins, but about the high sand dune just behind it.

_'When I found myself in this world, where there was no magic, I had several magical seeds with me - I had been intending to plant them in my garden when I got stranded,'_ Harry said as they followed his younger version, climbing up the dune's side. _'The lack of magic soon begun driving me insane - I had never really known how much the feel of it mattered, until it was all gone. It was like deprivation, being starved all the time. My own magic suffered because of it, and I feared that I'd lose my magic completely. So, eventually, I started planting the seeds, hoping that they would take root…'_

Arrom glanced at him, and then winced as he got flashes of memory that wasn't his - Harry in a field, on a hill, atop a mountain, below a temple, in jungle, in forest, in island, in snow, digging with his bare hands, planting seeds. The memories themselves weren't nearly as bad as the desperation surrounding them - the bitterness of failure they were all coloured with.

In the memory all around them, the younger Harry had reached the top of the dune, and was now digging a hole into it with his hands. Once he was satisfied with it, he out took a knife. Arrom winced again as he watched how the young, memory Harry drew the knife across his own palm, cutting a deep gash across it - and by the looks of his hand, it wasn't the first time.

The real Harry showed his palm. It was covered in old, red scars running from between the thumb and forefinger, down to the edge of the palm. Arrom grimaced, and before them the memory Harry let his blood dribble down, and soak the hole he had made.

_'Why?'_ Arrom asked, as the memory Harry dropped a small white seed into the hole he had made and moistened with his own blood.

_'None of the seeds grew - and I really tried. I looked for magical places - temples, burial grounds, ghost houses, even worship sites - I even planted few in church yards. I travelled all around the world, looking for suitable places,' _Harry explained, shaking his head._ 'Eventually I started watering the seeds with my blood, figuring that I was the only magical thing around, and my blood was only magical sustenance they could have. After that some of the seeds cracked, almost pushed out leaves… before they died. But I kept trying.'_

In the memory, the young Harry let his blood flow into the hole for a moment longer, before he covered it with sand. After that he stood up and left - and above them, the sun and the moon chased each other across the sky in rabid succession, as Harry made the time of his memory speed. Then time stilled once more returning to normal speed, and they saw young memory Harry climbing up the hill again to check on the seed he had planted. In Arrom's opinion, he didn't look hopeful at all.

_'You didn't think it would grow,'_ the elder man said.

_'No. No I didn't. None of the ones before had, and I had been trying for months. I was already losing hope. Then I saw this,'_ Harry nodded ahead, and Arrom could see it - a small sprout with several leaves, peaking out from the sand. The Willow's own, long leaves, only brand new and vibrantly green.

Together Arrom and Harry watched, as Harry's younger version stared in shock, and then kneeled beside the new tree, careful and frightful like thinking smallest touch would kill the tree. After a moment of looking utterly lost, he began to cry. _'Yeah,'_ the elder Harry mused, looking down to his distraught younger self. _'I really didn't think I'd ever see one of them growing.'_

Arrom gave him an uneasy look and then took a step towards him, resting his hand on his shoulder, as they watched how the younger version of him fretted about the small, fragile sprout, now laughing from midst of his sobs. Under Arrom's hand, Harry's shoulders slumped a little and for a moment he just leaned into the awkward comfort the elder man offered, before straightening his back again.

_'Let's fast forward a little,'_ Harry said, waving his hand. The world around them turned into blur of flickers as night and day raced across the sky. The sprout grew out right before their eyes, pushing more and more leaves out, growing taller inch by inch. As the world blurred in time, Arrom could see snatches of the younger Harry around the sprout - and how a tent was pitched in what seemed like instant in the unnaturally fast passage of events.

_'In a month, the Willow grew this much,'_ Harry said, slowing the passage of events again, showing the Willow as a young tree, now taller than Harry or the tent, and still growing. _'And I was ecstatic. Even when it was young, the __Willow__ was really strong in magic - and it was more magic than I had felt in the entire year. Back then I thought I would move into the desert, build a house, or a hut, right next to the tree. That was when the __Willow__'s roots reached the buried vessel.'_

They watched as young Harry walked around the young Willow, smiling and resting his hand against the memory of the tree. The elder Harry shook his head, folding his arms. _'I didn't know it at the time, but while my blood gave the Willow the spark of magic it needed to start sprouting, it was the buried ship that made it keep going,' _he said_. 'The heart of the island is right here, under our feet - and the __Willow__'s roots were making beeline for it without me ever noticing. I did notice it when the __Willow__ reached it, though.'_

As Arrom watched, the Willow suddenly busted into movement. The sand under them shifted and rumbled, and the Willow suddenly grew, sending the young memory Harry backing away in fright. It was almost like explosion, rather than the slow, steady growth of before - branches spurt out from the trunk of the Willow, while it widened, heightened and grew from a young tree into one that looked nearly ancient. In matter of seconds, the Willow grew tens of years.

_'Under me, the __Willow__ wrapped its roots around the ship, and brought it closer - feeding of its energy and materials. I'm not entirely sure how or why, but something about the material the vessel is made from is like magic,'_ Harry shrugged. _'It was similar enough for the __Willow__ to use it anyway.'_

Arrom nodded, fascinated. Naquadah, his mind supplied. The ship was most likely made of Naquadah, one of the most powerful natural elements in the universe. The Willow's structure had to be incredible for it to be able to use that in hard, refined form. _'How did you go from this to going into space?'_ he asked, turning to the elder Harry.

_'It was the __Willow__. It learned from the vessel - learned about space and others worlds,'_ Harry said. _'Of course, it didn't happen instantly. It took some time. After the __Willow__ grew into this, and grew more powerful, we found ourselves connecting. It might be because of the way the __Willow__ grew, or maybe because of the way I used my blood to water it, I don't know, but the __Willow__ became more intelligent than Whomping Willows usually are. It learned from me, it learned from the ship - and I think my longing for magic affected it. Eventually it suggested that we should look for others elsewhere, since Earth obviously had none.'_

Harry sped up the world around them again, and they watched how young Harry prepared for the departure. It looked like it had taken months - first he had gathered supplies and then he had started doing something to the Willow's lower branches. Arrom frowned - and then gasped, as he saw that the young Harry was sawing off branches from the Willow.

Elder Harry chuckled at his expression. _'I, uh. I bought some books about trees and gardening and such so that I could take care of the __Willow__. I learned about grafting from them,'_ he said, and motioned Arrom to come closer. _'See?'_

Arrom scowled, but watched how the young Harry sawed off a branch, and then cut into the bark before taking out another branch, this one a mere stick and completely without any leaves. While Arrom watched, the young Harry attached the small branch into the Willow's cut of one, pushing it under the cut in the bark and then tying it with some sort of wrapping. While the younger Harry painted the cut off branch with some sort of thick wax, the elder Harry chuckled.

_'It was mostly the __Willow__'s idea - I didn't even want to consider it, but the __Willow__ doesn't think like I do. It liked the idea of being able to produce fruits, and giving up few branches for some _special_ ones seemed like worthwhile sacrifice for it. Watch,'_ he urged, and together they watched how, after young Harry had finished, the Willow's branches and leaves shuddered, and the new branch begun to grow out, sprouting leaves that were completely unlike the Willow's own leaves, growing long and strong, until it was impossible to tell where it started and the actual Willow ended. Once it was as big as the branch young Harry had cut off, it shivered and produced at first white flowers which then dried up right before their eyes. After that, green fruits began growing, growing big and heavy within seconds.

_'It normally wouldn't be near that fast - and it's impossible to put one brand of tree into another like this, not unless they are similar. But the Willow isn't a normal tree - and after we had success with the apples, the Willow wanted others,'_ Harry said, shaking his head, as the world sped up again and they watched young Harry graft more and more trees into the lower branches of the Willow, until it was a forest unto itself, with the lower branches all having different types of leaves, and different types of fruits. _'I spend almost two months, just going around, getting the branches and grafting them into the __Willow__.'_

_'And once you were done, you left Earth?'_ Arrom asked.

_'Eventually, yeah,'_ Harry nodded, as the scene changed and they saw young Harry, tying a net into the trunk of the Willow, with what looked like all his things in it. _'The __Willow__ didn't have any usable soil at the time - sand wasn't really good for anything - so it was a bit awkward. But… we managed to take off.'_

Arrom nodded and together they stepped back, watching how the Willow raised the spherical shield around itself and young Harry, distorting the air around it. Then, while the ground shook and the sand shifted and sank, the Willow started it's ascend, the sand pouring from it's roots like water as it did, revealing the extend of the naked root system - and how it wrapped around a pyramid shaped ship, around it and _into_ it, breaking through the metal hull.

The entire assembly was awkward and strange looking inside the bubble of its shield, but it didn't seem to hinder it's functionality as the ruined ship below the Willow shuddered, its engines glowing with energy. A long spike extended from the bottom of the ship - the hyperdrive thruster, Arrom thought - and while he and elder Harry watched, the ship and the Willow - and young Harry who was hugging the tree's trunk - shot upwards into the sky.

_'We eventually realised that while the hyperspace was better than any sunlight for the Willow, it still needed soil and water - the first trip through hyperspace was manageable, but a bit rough for the Willow, it lost a few branches and lot of leaves. So, on the first planet we reached, the Willow rooted into the soil and bundled it around the ship, completely covering it and creating the island,'_ Harry said, the image shifting and showing them in a strange, foggy planet where the Willow's roots slithered in the moist soil, digging into it and bringing it closer to the ship, covering it completely. _'We also made the ship below water tight again so that it could be used to store water - after that we've almost always landed on lakes and rivers so that the __Willow__ can refill the ship for the next trip. Occasionally we replace some of the soil too, of course, but that's rarer.'_

Arrom nodded. It was starting to make sense - but there were still something strange about the whole thing. _'Where do you get the power for all of this?'_ he asked.

Harry shrugged. _'Partially from hyperspace and partially from the ship. The __Willow__ is in the end a tree - expert at synthesising something out of something else. The whole thing is a bit too complex for me to keep track of, but the Willow knows what it's doing - and we've been travelling around long enough to know it works.'_

_'But if the Willow still using the ship, converting the Naquadah into usable energy, then it means you're eventually going to run out,'_ Arrom said worriedly. _'And if you use too much of the ship, you might lose the systems it offers.'_

_'Eventually, but it will take years and years. The __Willow__ doesn't really need much - and there are lots of bits and pieces in the ship it can use, without risking the systems. Walls, floors, interior, that type of thing,'_ Harry answered. _'And in some planets there are the same stuff in the soil as the one the ship is made from - the __Willow__ can use that too.'_

_'Really?'_ Arrom asked, fascinated. He had known that the Willow was intelligent, and that there was some technology involved, but the symbiosis of the two was incredible. _'Do you think I could see how the __Willow__ functions on the inside - like when we left the planet of the ruins? When you showed how the __Willow__ activated the ship below?'_

_'Sure,'_ Harry answered, and pushed him out of his memories and back in the surge of the Willow. Arrom floated around in the Willow's energy for a moment, appreciating it better now that he knew what it was, how it worked - and then Harry was there again, guiding him elsewhere.

Suddenly Arrom was in the Willow's leaves, soaking in the energy of the Hyperspace - then he was in the veins, in the cells, watching and feeling how the energy was shifted and changed. He was following it down the roots into the ship, into its power cells, where a knot of Willow's roots transferred energy back and forth, transforming it into something the ship could use. Elsewhere, the Willow's roots were in the ship's walls, in the water inside, in the soil, slowly eating through the metals, through the materials, before starting another transformation process to turn the Naquadah into something the Willow could use.

The amount of function inside the tree was incredible, more so now that Arrom really understood it. It seemed that there was nothing but motion of energy in the Willow, going up and down, feeding the leaves and the trunk, the roots, the ship below - and all the while, the Willow was also feeding the fruits and the berries, constantly making sure that Harry and Arrom had enough to eat.

It was all so very regulated - nothing of it was automatic or natural, but the Willow's will was behind every action, every shift, controlling and guiding it all. The precision was incredible, how the Willow could give one fruit more glucose than it gave to another, or how it shifted energy to go through these roots rather than the other ones. Everything had a purpose, and the Willow governed it all, every cell, every molecule. The tree's intelligence was strange and alien, soothing and wide and alert all the while resting, involved in things Arrom had never even thought of, but which were utterly fascinating to feel.

_'Come on,'_ Harry said finally. _'We've been here for a long time - we need to eat something.'_

For a moment Arrom was overcame by the thought of what a shame it was, that they actually had to _eat_. To have leaves and roots to feed with, to produce their own sustenance from what they could gather without never even needing to move - that would be so much easier, so much more efficient. He could hear Harry chuckling in agreement in the back of his head, because he had thought it too, once. Then they were shifting upwards and out, back into their own, so much less efficient bodies.

"It's really cool, I know, but if you let yourself go, it might end up killing you," Harry said once they were out again, stretching his arms. "You might forget your own body entirely and let it starve. It nearly happened to me couple of the times - I might've starved, if the Willow hadn't kicked me out."

Arrom nodded in agreement, rubbing his slightly stiff neck and wondering how long they had been in the Willow. While he worked out the kinks in his neck, Harry kicked his sandals off and nimbly climbed the Willow's trunk and up to the lower branches, where he started picking up some fruits. He returned with a bunch of them sheltered in the hem of his robes, and as he sat back down beside Arrom, he automatically handed the pears to the elder man, going for the apples himself.

"I think the Willow might be unique. I… can't remember everything, obviously, but what I know about space travel doesn't cover this," Arrom said, leaning his shoulder against the trunk of the Willow, enjoying the feeling of the surge of life inside it. "If we can find my people or some other magical people, I don't think they'll have _this_."

"Yeah, we thought so too. The way Willow grew was pretty much an accident," Harry agreed. "But if we find a world with magic, world where we might feel at home, we'll be happy with that - even if it's like nothing we know."

Arrom nodded, now understanding that odd longing better than before. Even though the Willow could live on the energy of the hyperspace and the materials of the ship, it too missed magic - that was why it always welcomed Harry and Arrom inside, because in the end they were all the same, and all they had.

"Do you think this helped you remember anything new, then?" Harry asked.

"I don't know - but I learned something new," Arrom mused. "I don't understand something, though. You were born on magical world - the seeds you had were from magical world, and they would've sprouted on magical world. How did you end up in non magical world?" he asked, and frowned. "You said something about a… a reality?"

Harry frowned, biting into his apple. "I don't know," he said after a moment. "I've thought it over a million times. Maybe it was a freak accident like the growth of the Willow - or maybe someone booby trapped the apparation point…" he shook his head and looked down to the apple.

"That doesn't really explain anything," Arrom pointed out, nudging Harry with his knee to get him talking.

"I guess not," Harry murmured, glancing up and smiling wryly. "I'm from Earth. I was born there, raised there, and I learned magic there. Only it was different version of the Earth than the one Willow and I left behind - the Earth we're from, it had magic. It had magical people, plants, animals, everything," he said. "The seeds would've sprouted there without any problem."

"And then?" Arrom asked.

"And then I was in the magic-less Earth. One moment I was coming back from shopping, planning my garden, intending to start planting some seeds - and next thing I knew I was standing in a forest where my house was supposed to be, only it wasn't there. And when I tried to go back, the shopping street was gone," Harry shrugged. "It was like I had apparated into another world - exactly like the one I left behind, cities, streets, countries were all the same… but it was all without any magic in it, any magical people, nothing familiar. And I couldn't apparate back, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get back."

The younger man shook his head and trailed away, looking pained.

Arrom glanced at him and for a moment didn't say anything, not sure what he could say that wouldn't be cruel or hurtful. "Do you think that maybe if we find other magical people, they might be able to send you home?" he finally asked after a moment.

"At this point, I don't really care. All I want to do is find more magic," Harry sighed. "I'd be satisfied with just that."

Arrom nodded, and concentrated into his fruits, letting the painful subject slide away.

xx

Alrighty, second chapter - and some explanations about how Harry and the Willow got going. Also, to answer the questions - no, I haven't watched Tenchi Muyo. Those who guessed _the Fountain_ movie as source of inspiration, good job, that's where I got the idea to write this fic from. Oddly enough this was at first supposed to be story about Harry ending up in alternate reality without magic and getting tattoos to remember his friends/magic with, but that's how my ideas work.

My apologies for possible grammar errors and such.


	3. Chapter three

Warnings; Slash, amnesia, OOCness, Spoilers. AU version of SG1 season seven, starting from episode "Fallen".

**Astral synthesis**

**Chapter three**

Few days later they dropped out of hyperspace, finally arriving at the next planet. The exit from hyperspace ended up being much smoother than the entrance, as the Willow simply fell out and into the emptiness of space around a planet which hovered just above them, enormous and beautiful and glowing green against the darkness surrounding it.

Somehow, Arrom knew they weren't going to land even before the Willow jerked, and turned the entire island around and away from the planet. Blinking with confusion, he glanced backwards and to Harry who was kneeling at the great tree's roots. "What's going on?" the elder man asked.

"The Willow doesn't want to land," Harry answered without opening his eyes, resting his forehead against the tree's trunk. "The planet is habited by some nasty guys - the Willow can sense their spaceships down there." He hissed softly, sounding anxious. "Every time we've encountered them, they tried to destroy us."

Arrom frowned and glanced up. "You sure that they're the same guys?" he asked worriedly.

"The technology is the same - and we can't risk finding out more. The last time we nearly got ourselves blown up," Harry answered and sighed. "We're going back to hyperspace."

And so they did. The window opened above the Willow, and immediately after they were back in the purple-blue of the hyperspace. Arrom frowned, a bit disappointed that they had been in normal space only for few seconds, but he understood. The Willow had nothing in way of weapons - and the shield, though very tight, wasn't very strong, as it needed to be kept active all the time to maintain atmosphere. In a fight, they'd lose without question.

"Does this happen often?" he asked, walking back to Harry and, crouching beside him. "You drop out of hyperspace, and then have to jump back in?"

"More often than we'd like. I don't know who those guys are, but they're almost half of the planets we visit - and if they see us, they just start shooting. We usually take off as quick as we can if we detect them," Harry sighed, pulling away from the trunk. "The next planet is pretty close by - a week or so in hyperspace. It might be occupied too, being so close, though."

Arrom sighed too. "It would've been nice to stretch our legs a bit," he mused, sitting down onto the Willow's roots.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, and for a moment they sat silently, basking in the disappointment. "You want trying some new spells?" the younger man asked after a moment.

"I still haven't been able to cast any of the previous ones right," Arrom objected. "Let me master those first."

"Alright - I just thought some change might be refreshing," Harry shrugged awkwardly, rubbing his hand across his neck and looking away.

"It's fine. I'm just… it's fine," Arrom said, but if he was honest with himself, he was getting a bit irritated with spell work. Though he had gotten some reactions with the wand, it was neither nothing lasting nor nothing impressive - nothing compared to what Harry could do. One of the reasons he had been looking forward to the arrival at the planet was to get a break from trying.

"Hey," he said after a moment. "What was it like, growing up with magic? In the Earth that had it?" he asked.

Harry frowned. "I don't know. I didn't exactly grow up with it - I didn't even know I had magic before I was eleven, and was invited into a school of magic," he admitted. "My parents were magical, but they died when I was little and I was raised by non-magical people - my mother's sister and her family. They knew, but they didn't want me to know, so… I didn't until the last possible moment."

"That must've been hard," Arrom murmured, frowning. It sounded a bit familiar. Something about it anyway…

"Not really. It was great - the school was a boarding school, which meant that I could be there ten months out of the year. I got away form my family, so it was pretty much dream come true. And I got to learn magic," Harry shrugged. "It wasn't all good, of course. I wasn't that good with school and there were some people who really didn't like me - and then there were dark wizards and the war. It had just ended couple months before I ended up stranded in the magic-less Earth." He frowned. "That kind of made the whole thing worse - we just got peace and then I got transported to another world."

"I can't even imagine," Arrom said quietly and nudged the younger man with his elbow. Nudging, he had found, had became pretty common between them - it was easiest way to move inside the Willow, to nudge. "Tell me about the school. You learned magic there, right?"

Harry smiled awkwardly and nodded. "Hogwarts was more of a home to me, than it was a school - that's probably why I was kind of bad at studying," he started, and then told Arrom about the great castle in the mountains, next to a lake and ancient forests that was full of magical trees like and unlike the Willow. He told about the different subjects they taught in Hogwarts - things like levitation, the heating, cooling and cleaning spells and such were charms, while transforming something into something else was transfiguration,. Much harder subject to master. Harry, though, had apparently been best at defence against the dark arts which consisted of mostly combat type of spell work.

"There were other subjects too. But the rest weren't studying magic as they were studying about magic. Except for potions and herbology and care of magical creatures, but those weren't doing magic but studying other magical things. Divination was utter rubbish, as was history of magic, but maybe that was because of the teachers," Harry mused, and continued on, telling about the things he had learned in his first years of Hogwarts.

"So, every year the subjects got more complicated?" Arrom asked thoughtfully.

"Yeah, though you had to master the basics first," Harry nodded. "The spells I've been trying to teach you are all first year spells."

Arrom nodded. "And the subjects taught there, charms, transfiguration and defence, that's all the spells there are?"

"No, no. Just the ones taught there. There's spells for healing, those were only taught outside Hogwarts," the younger man shrugged. "Then there's specialised spells for certain jobs, like being Auror or stuff, those you learn in the academy or other type of schools. And then there are forbidden arts like the Dark Arts that are more or less illegal… I think there were lot more, but I never learned all of it - what I learned in Hogwarts was pretty much it."

"But you need spells for everything, and a wand?" the elder man asked thoughtfully.

"Well, not all of them. Apparation works without spells or a wand, but it takes time to master. And then there were stuff like human transformation - some were born with ability to transform themselves, and then others studied it. My father and his friends, they studied to become Animagi - they could transform into certain animals. In the end, you don't need a spell or wand for that," Harry mused. "I don't think you need them for self-levitation either - but I don't know how that works. I've only seen two dark wizards do it, so it might be a dark art."

"So, there _is_ magic you can do wandlessly and without a spell," Arrom murmured, staring at the edge of the island and into the hyperspace.

"What are you thinking?" Harry asked curiously.

"I don't know. Sometimes it seems that the hardest thing about magic is the spell and the wand - I know I could do it, I have the power, but the wand, the spell… they don't fit. When I managed to levitate the leaf, I'm not sure if I used your wand at all," Arrom admitted. "And I'm not sure if the spell actually did anything at that time."

"You think you did it wandlessly, silently?"

"Yes, I suppose. Is it possible?" Arrom asked, frowning. "Maybe my people don't use tools like that - maybe all their magic is wandless and silent. Maybe that's why I can't do it right."

"I'm not sure, but… I can't say that it isn't possible, either," Harry said, leaning his chin into his palm and staring up to the elder man thoughtfully. "If you think you can do magic easier without wands or spells, then try it. And if your magic works better like that, then that's how we'll continue."

The elder man nodded, a little relieved. "I'll try that, then."

x

Magic without a wand did not come easily, Arrom soon found - but it came easier than it had with one. The concentration Arrom needed to sum up just to levitate a single leaf was more than he was adjusted to handle, but each time it became easier. While Harry watched from the side, shyly jubilant smile on his lips, Arrom learned to make the fallen leaves dance as if in wind and exactly how he wanted them to. Arrom too felt triumphant, though he knew that there wasn't truly that much of a cause for it. Levitation of small, nearly weightless objects was literally the least of Harry's powers, and he was no where near to his level, and wouldn't be for some time.

But it still felt like great accomplishment and reason to celebrate - and it was really hard not to, when Harry agreed. The younger man agreed the point of producing a carefully kept and hidden bottle of grape wine he had apparently traded for nearly a year ago, but never had any cause to drink. They broke the bottle open at the Willow's roots, and though their cups were mismatched and their celebration silent and fairly cautious, it still felt more comfortable than they had yet dared to be each other. Which was maybe a little strange, considering that they were two people who could traverse each other's minds, and did on daily bases.

"To freedom," Arrom suggested, holding his porcelain cup up.

"To flight," Harry agreed, and gently tapped his own, wooden cup against his.

Arrom found the wine sharp and strong and surprisingly sweet, containing flavours he had never experienced before. With the Azul he had only had the occasional mead, and never anything this strong. The rush of the spirit was fast and warm, making his belly heat and his back relax what felt like first time in his life. Harry, who slumped against the Willow comfortably, seemed to experience the same reaction.

"Many happy returns," the younger man said, smiling absently, and for a moment they drank in quiet, filling their cups again and drinking again, until Arrom felt pleasantly flushed, and there was warm colour high on Harry's cheeks.

"What is the story of these?" Arrom asked after a moment in fit of straightforwardness he usually tried to avoid, motioning at Harry's facial jewellery. "I have never seen you without them. Are they some sort of tradition? Or do they have magical qualities?"

Harry blinked with surprised behind the round disks of glass of the said jewellery, and then laughed abruptly. "No, nothing like it," he answered, tugging the strange frames off his face. "They're actually medicine. My eyes are poor - and these help me see better," he said, handing them over. "Eye-glasses, is what they're called. Or just glasses."

"You come from planet named Earth and you call glasses that go over your eyes _glasses_. Your people must be unimaginative," Arrom mused, accepting the glasses and studying them curiously. He had never thought he'd get to touch them - he had honestly thought that they might have some sort of spiritual meaning, like the ceremonial necklaces some Azul had worn, or the bands married couples had worn around their wrists - something other people weren't meant to touch. "Can I…?" he asked, lifting the glasses a little.

"Sure," Harry nodded, looking at him amusedly.

Arrom lifted the glasses to his own face, awkwardly fitting the strange frames over his nose and ears. He wasn't sure what he had expected, but the abrupt sharpening of everything around him wasn't it. He had more or less gotten used to how bad his eyesight was, so to see it clear so easily was more surprising than the fact that it was because of pieces of glass. Fascinated, Arrom looked around himself and found to his shock that he could see the grass growing right at the edge of the island - and he could see the Willow's leaves, he could see the space between them. Everything was so sharp!

"Is this how you see the world?" he asked, amazed.

"Right now everything is a bit blurry," Harry chucked, leaning his cheek against the Willow's root, having fallen further down on the ground until he was more lying than sitting. "For people who have perfect eyesight, they would work the opposite - and make their eyes worse."

"I guess my eyesight is bad then. Where did you get these?" Arrom asked, reluctantly pulling the glasses away.

"From Earth," the younger man said, and blinked up to him. "Your eyesight is bad?"

"Yes, it's been that way since I woke up," Arrom answered and handed the glasses back. "I suppose there is no way for me to get similar glasses, then?"

"We're pretty far away from Earth, so no, it wouldn't be that easy," Harry answered, taking the delicate item back and frowning at them. "These made your eyesight better?" he then asked, waving the glasses around a little.

"Yes, everything was very sharp," Arrom nodded and then frowned. "But you need them yourself, don't you?"

"I do, I'm blind as a bat without these - but I have a trick I could use," Harry said, and jumped up - or upwards anyway, the motion was very loose and slightly shaky. "Hold that thought," he said, pulling the glasses back on, and making his way to one of the many chests he had scattered across the island. Arrom waited, watching how the younger man produced a small wooden box, and a leather bag, before returning and almost stumbling over one of Willow's upraised roots.

"I've done something like this once before - though I did it for a different thing, but the maybe the same trick will work again," Harry said, collapsing to sit next to the Willow, quickly fumbling the box and the satchel open. They contained sand - the box one had black, metallic looking sand in it, while the satchel had actual, normal sand in it.

"What are you doing?" Arrom asked, shifting closer curiously, and almost knocking their wine bottle over.

"A trick," Harry grinned, taking off his glasses again. "These are basically just metal and glass, with little bit of rubber thrown in, but I can work around that. And here I have metal, and sand, so I can maybe use those for some inventive transfiguration."

"You can _do_ that?" the elder man asked, shocked.

"I did it once. There was this planet and the people had this device that filtered their water - I didn't really get it all, but there was this gadget that they had broken. I managed to make a copy of it once I had all the materials it was made from. Glasses are actually bit easier," Harry shrugged. "I'll still need a little bit of help," he murmured.

Arrom watched silently as Harry placed the glasses and two piles of sand into the Willow's roots, before taking his wand into his right hand and then resting his left against the Willow's bark. The elder man immediately sensed the connection between the younger man and the tree, as they joined forces. He also soon figured out why Harry reached for the Willow - the trees senses and understanding of details was greater than Harry alone managed - the Willow comprehended things on _molecular_ level, after all. Transfiguration without actual spell was probably impossible for Harry - but not for the Willow.

Fascinated, Arrom stared how Harry waved the wand over the two piles of sand, his eyes heavy lidded and almost closed. The transformation was slow and all the more incredible to witness because of it, as the iron sand shifted and begun to draw together to form the framework of the glasses, while the lighter shaded sand shifted and twisted - and suddenly turned into glass. For a moment Arrom was worried that the glass might be hot, and might burn the Willow where it touched the tree's roots, but nothing like that happened. As if it wasn't glass but some form of gel, the glass twisted into two separate blobs - and then poured itself into the empty metal frame, settling into it and then hardening. The result was nearly exact replica of Harry's own glasses - only the metal was of different colour, and the replica had iron pads where the original had rubber.

"Oh, that was surprisingly easy," Harry murmured, blinking and lowering his wand. He lifted the new glasses and studied them form moment before trying them on. He grinned, turning to Arrom. "I think we got the prescription right too," he said, and took the replica glasses off, handing them to Arrom - who found to his surprise, that they even had the odd small hinges in the corners, just like Harry's glasses did.

While the elder man slipped the replica glasses on, not quite sure what to think of the fact that Harry had just _made them for him_ without him even needing to ask or offer a payment, Harry pulled his own glasses on, still grinning. Trying to figure out what to say, how to express his gratitude Arrom just stared the younger man helplessly.

"I never noticed that your eyes were green," was what came out of his mouth, instead of a _thank you_ that he had been intending to say. Harry kept on grinning and just nodded, and taking it as permission, Arrom spent a moment longer just looking at him, for the first time seeing the other's features clearly. The colour of his eyes wasn't the only thing he had missed - he had also missed the scar on his forehead, and just how _young_ Harry actually was. He was a man, certainly, but at least ten years younger than Arrom himself was - probably a little more.

"More wine?" Harry asked, breaking the eye contact and reaching for the bottle again.

"Please," Arrom nodded, and the point at which he should've expressed his gratitude came and went before he could actually say it.

x

The next day, while Harry was still asleep in his small tent, most likely suffering the effects of the wine as he had drank a little more of it than Arrom had, the elder man decided to go about his gratitude properly. It felt a little silly, to sneak around behind Harry's back when there was so little space for him to sneak in, but he did it regardless, silently walking around Harry's tent and kneeling beside the Willow, desperately reaching for the tree, hoping against hope that he could finally make a contact without Harry's aid.

"Come on, please. I need help," he murmured, leaning closer and resting his forehead against the bark. "It's for Harry, for the glasses - I want to thank him. I need your help for it."

If he had been uncertain of whether the tree could actually understand speech, he wasn't after the tree gently tugged him in. The experience was different than it had ever been with Harry - louder and faster, almost as if some blindfold Arrom always wore with Harry wasn't present this time. He didn't mind it, though it was slightly overwhelming, and instead pushed forward with his plea.

The Willow understood the question immediately, and showed him one of its grafted branches, the one that produced red-orange-yellow fruits called peaches that Harry preferred to eat after soaking them in sugar water over the night, and Arrom didn't much like. He could feel how the Willow shook the branch, letting loose some of that branch's leaves before settling back down again with a sensation of an offer.

_'Thank you,'_ Arrom answered and withdrew from the great tree, to find that on the other side of the Willow, the ground was littered by bright green leaves. He picked them up eagerly, before returning back to his tent.

Dyeing clothing was one of the few things he had learned from the Azul without much difficulty. The dyes the Azul had used had been usually berries and flowers, as the only colour they favoured wasn't easy to come by other ways. Green was a new colour for Arrom, one he had never tried to produce, but he trusted the Willow's opinion in this case. He carefully chopped the leaves the tree had given him, before mixing them into pot of water, and kindling a fire in his small stove and letting the mixture simmer on it.

Thankfully, he had plenty of clothes to pick from - the Azul had been very kind to him in that aspect, giving him all their old robes and clothes. Most of them he had never worn because they were too short, or they were for different weather - the planet had been too cold for him to wear most of them. The island had a warmer temperature, though, so it was no longer a problem. The robes he selected were already dyed blue, but bleaching them of colour was easily done - the Azul colouring method was such that it had to be repeated periodically or the colour faded completely.

After bleaching the robes to their natural, light grey tone, he soaked the cloth in cold water and last of his vinegar, before eventually adding it into the pot with the leaves, and leaving it. It would take some time for the colour to properly take - the whole day to become as vibrant as he wanted - but he had time to wait. Hiding the pot underneath his table, he washed his hands and got ready to go about his day normally, deciding to try simple transfiguration today, after the success with the levitation in the previous day.

Turning a piece of wood into a metal needle had seemed like insanity to him before, but that was before Harry had made him glasses out of _sand_.

While Harry spent most of the so called morning soaking in the wooden tub, moaning about a headache, Arrom worked on the wood splinters Harry had readied for him when he had been trying to transfiguration with a wand, trying not to think about the robe an the dye simmering in his tent, trying not to wonder too hard about whether or not Harry would like it. Thankfully they spent the most of the day separately, Harry trying to keep his after-drinking misery to himself, and Arrom trying to do the impossible with magic. They had about equal amounts of successes with their respective tasks, and by the time Arrom gave up for the day, he had barely managed to turn the small wooden stick pointed.

"I'm never drinking again. Never," Harry swore after Arrom, mostly out of sympathy, had fetched him something to eat.

"It was fun at the time," Arrom mused and couldn't help but smile as the younger man groaned, flicking a mandarin peel at him before crawling back to his small tent to sleep the rest of his misery - and the day - away.

The next day Harry was thankfully feeling much better - still swearing he'd never drink again, but no longer complaining a headache. Arrom had finished the robes by then, and gotten almost the result he had wished for - the colour wasn't as dark as he had hoped - but when it came the time to hand hem over, he had no idea how to do it. The concept of answering a gift with a gift had came so easily to him, that only after he had done all the work he realised that he had never given a gift before - that he had no idea how to do it.

What if Harry wouldn't like them, if he thought they were ugly or unusable - or worse yet, unneeded and bothersome? Arrom had no idea how to handle that - having never given a gift before, he had no idea what it would be like if that gift was badly received.

Eventually he just snatched the robes from his tent where he had hung them to dry, walked over to Harry who was making himself breakfast. "I, uh… here," Arrom said, dropping the robes to the nearest open surface, which was table right next to Harry. "I made these for… well, dyed them. They're for the glasses. I thought you'd… just, take them. It's okay if you don't wear them," he said awkwardly.

Harry blinked up to him with surprise, bore setting the frying pan onto the edge of his stone fire pit and reaching for the robes. Arrom felt unbearably awkward while the younger man inspected the robes, holding them up by the shoulders. "You dyed these?" he asked finally.

Arrom nodded awkwardly. "The Willow gave me some leaves for the dye," he said, looking away. "All you wear is grey. It seems rather… gloomy."

From the corner of his eye, he could see Harry still staring at him silently, before the younger man turned away and set the green robes aside. Arrom felt a momentary disappointment, and then Harry swiftly undressed the dark grey robes he was wearing, quickly pulled the green ones on. Turning to look at him with relief and awkward joy, Arrom noted that the robes were just tiniest bit too big for him - but compared to the frayed grey ones of before, they looked much better… at least to his highly biased eyes.

After securing a belt across the waist of the robes and checking them for pockets and such, Harry nodded at him. "Have you tried roasted nuts before?" he then asked turning back to his cooking.

"Not that I remember," Arrom said carefully, lifting an eyebrow at the off mixture the younger man was frying.

"Get a bowl," Harry simply said, nodding towards the table where his cooking utensils were spread out. Not sure what else to do, Arrom did as asked - and ten minutes later he found that maybe there was some point to Harry's habit of cooking, even when the food was perfectly edible raw.

"Why green?" Harry asked, while they finished the meal.

Arrom thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't even consider trying any other colours," he said awkwardly, scratching his chin. "In hindsight, I could have gotten some great colours from the fruits. The cherries would make great red dye…"

The younger man stared at the sleeve of his new robes and shook his head. "Green is perfect," he said, and smiled.

x

It seemed like some awkward barrier that had been there before had disappeared after that. Arrom found himself joining Harry at his usual meal times, and they spend more time with each other than they did apart - even when they weren't talking about spells or Arrom's memories. And though Harry still seemed worried that too much togetherness would start bothering one or both of them - or namely Arrom - the elder man felt nothing like that. It was much better like this, when they didn't keep distances between each other to let the other have whatever space they thought the other needed - it was less stiff.

The spell work got easier too, because Harry no longer merely show him what he needed to try and then leave him alone to try - instead he sat beside Arrom, giving pointers, showing the spell again and again. With Harry's watchful guidance, Arrom moved from leaves to small pebbles and managed to make them fly like they were weightless too. He got more process done with transfiguration too, though not quite as much as he would've liked.

"I don't understand how it is possible anyway, turning wood into metal," he admitted to Harry who inspected the result curiously. Arrom had managed to turn the wood splinter into a perfect needle shape, even with a hole for thread and everything… but it had remained wood. Wood you would possibly sew soft fabrics with, but wood nonetheless. "Every bit of common sense in me screams that it's not physically possible."

"It isn't - that's why it's called magic, not science," Harry answered, poking his finger with the wood needle. "Though it might help you to know that turning something into another element isn't permanent. I could turn this to metal, and it might stay metal for a day or so, but eventually it would revert back to wood."

Arrom frowned and nervously touched his glasses. "Will these turn into sand?" he asked.

"No. When you turn something into something else while using the exact same materials, that is permanent. That's why I used the sand - it was close enough to the original materials of my glasses to make the transfiguration stick," the younger man assured, and held up the wooden needle. "This will stay in this shape because the original and the transfigured version are both the same material."

"What's the point in transfiguration if it doesn't last?" Arrom asked. "And if it's not permanent, why it's called transfiguration and not a charm?"

Harry shrugged. "To me the non-lasting transfigurations always felt more like illusions than actual transfigurations or even charms," he admitted. "But I think we needed to learn them to learn the permanent transfigurations - it was good practice for the real thing. Also, there are times you need something to be something else only for short while - like you might need a needle for the next half an hour until you sew a rip in your clothes, but after that it's not needed anymore, so it doesn't matter if it reverts back to wood."

Arrom nodded thoughtfully, folding his arms. "I don't think I can do the temporary transfiguration," he said after a moment. "I think I can do the permanent types after some tries, they feel more natural and possible to me, like with the needle… But the illusions, I just… I can't even imagine myself able to do them."

Harry nodded. "I'm starting to think that too," he agreed, handing the needle back. "It has me a little worried, though."

"Why?"

"Because I think the reason why I can do illusions and some of the less _natural_ magic is because I was born on magical planet - I probably got the energy to do those things from the planet, from the environment. After getting stranded, the permanent types have been easier for me too, rather than the temporary types," Harry answered, frowning. "I can still do some charms easily, but others are harder now - even right next to the Willow."

Arrom frowned slightly, thinking about it. "You think I wasn't born on magical planet?" he asked.

"Maybe," Harry shrugged. "It would explain some things about you and about your magic."

The elder man nodded. He had noticed it too - his magic felt brand new and never used. None of it came out with ease or with knowledge and none of it really felt familiar either. Every thing he managed to do felt new. "I probably haven't had magic for long," he said out loud what they were both thinking."

"Yeah," Harry agreed and gave him a worried look.

"I'm not going to stop trying," Arrom answered the unspoken question. "Even if I didn't have it before, I have it now. And I want to learn control it."

Harry smiled softly and nodded, trying not to look relieved but looking just like that regardless. "Well, now that we know about this, we should get somewhere faster," he said. "I'll write down some magical arts which I think would work for you better than what we've been trying to so far, that ought to help us progress. First I need you to figure out whether or not you could do any defence spells…"

"Defence against the dark arts? You mean battle spells and such," Arrom asked.

"Those are the ones I know the best," Harry admitted. "And I would feel a lot better if I knew you could cast a protego if you needed to."

"Let's try, then," Arrom suggested, and they did.

When it was time for them to finally reach the next planet and drop out of hyperspace, they had figured out that Arrom could indeed manage some type of battle spells - but not all of them. Expelliarmus for one didn't work exactly the way it did for Harry - but Arrom found he could produce the effect by using the same power he used to levitate things. It took a bit more power than levitating a leaf to wrench something from Harry's grip when he was trying to hold onto it with all his might, but it was possible. A shield, Arrom soon figured out, wasn't completely beyond his abilities, but getting it to be as powerful as Harry's shields were - powerful enough to stop all but the most lethal of spells - would take some time.

"It's like every spell I do, I need to consciously power," Arrom mused. "It's like…. Like it's a muscle and I need to flex. If that makes any sense."

"It does. It wasn't like my spells were all that powerful in the beginning - it took lot of practice to get to this point," Harry said, chuckling. "Come on. We're about to drop into normal space. Let's see if we can land this time."

They sat on the Willow's roots and watched, how the hypespace opened and they dropped smoothly through the breach into normal space. While leaning his back against the Willow's trunk, Arrom stared across the island and to the darkness of empty space, to the starts flickering there. Before they had been just small dots of blurry light - now he could actually see them, tell the difference between this star and another.

Then he saw the planet, and forgot the stars entirely. While Harry frowned, communing with the Willow with his eyes closed and all his concentration in the tree, Arrom stood up and walked to the edge of the island, to see up and past the Willow's thick foliage. The planet was brownish red, much smaller than the planet of the ruins or the one they had only seen a glimpse off - but something about this planet was special.

Behind him, Harry sighed. "It's occupied too," he said. "We're going back to hyperspace."

"No, no, wait. Please, ask the Willow to wait," Arrom said hastily. "I… I think I know this planet."

He could feel Harry glancing at him, but couldn't tear his eyes away from the red-brown planet, from the odd, alluring feel that he had been here before, seen the planet before - and that there was something important about it that he should really remember. The Willow hummed and it's leaves rustled - and then odd, white sheen ran through the shield around the island, making Arrom blink, and glance down to see Harry standing up.

"We're invisible. It's not perfect defence, but it should hide us for some while," the younger man said, joining him at the island's edge. "The Willow isn't happy about this, but if this is the world you're from…"

"No, no. I don't think this is it," Arrom answered, looking up, and to the planet. It was completely cloudless, and for a moment he was certain it was dead, lifeless, and had no atmosphere. But he knew it did - because he had been down there, once. "No, it doesn't feel like that at all. But there is something… something about this place. Something important."

Harry eyed him worriedly, as Arrom rubbed his temples and tried to force himself remember. It was important, really, really important, and he should remember it, should know it, and yet… yet it was the sun like behind clouds. He was sure it was there, even if he couldn't see it.

Next thing he knew, Harry was holding his hand, dragging him away from the island's edge. Arrom followed without question, and then with new vigour as Harry led him to the Willow and to the base of it, reaching their entwined hands to the tree's surface. Arrom could feel the Willow's worry and curiosity as the two of them fell into it - and when they pushed towards Arrom's mind to see if any new doors had been unlocked, if they could nudge them open further, the Willow seemed to follow them.

There was a door unlocked - and with Harry's and Willow's combined power, it opened easily, letting them in without problem.

Suddenly, Arrom was standing in rough ground, Harry next to him - and around them there was a camp. Arrom blinked with surprise, realising that it wasn't actually camp long before he realised that they were in a memory - his memory. There were people around them, dirty, stained, weary people, digging into the rough soil, carrying bucketfuls of stone, pushing carts loaded full of rock - and there…

_'Is that me?'_ Arrom asked, shocked.

_'I think it is,'_ Harry agreed, sounding equally surprised as they saw another Arrom just little further away. Arrom's memory-self was wearing an earth brown cloak with a deep hood, standing right in middle of the camp, looking around him with a pained frown. Around him, the people kept on their tasks without paying him any mind, some walking right past him without acknowledging him in the slightest - and then the real Arrom and Harry saw the soldiers. They were all around them, pushing the workers harshly, dragging them back and forth, kicking them.

_'They're not workers. They're slaves,'_ Harry whispered, his voice horrified as he shifted closer to Arrom, who was too shocked, too disgusted to say anything at all.

There was a row of workers, carrying heavy containers by twos with some sort of yoke's on their shoulders. In the end of the row, there was a youth and an old man, both who looked tired, overworked. The boy fell to his knees under the weight of their burden - and one of the soldiers moved forward, taking out a whip and lashing it hard across the boy's shoulders, once, twice.

"Leave him alone," the old man demanded, stepping forward, glaring.

While Arrom and Harry - and Arrom's memory-self - watched, the soldier turned to whip the old man, while the youth screamed him to stop. "No, Master!" echoed through the memory, pained and outraged. "Master, _no_!"

_'Why isn't he doing anything?'_ Arrom demanded, motioning at his memory self who just _stood_ there and watched, scowling at the scene. _'He's right there, why isn't he…?'_

Harry took his hand, squeezing it hard. _'Arrom, feel him. This is your memory - you can feel the emotions attached to it,'_ he said, sounding choked - and then Arrom felt, the helpless outrage that he had for a moment thought was his own. It was in a way, but it didn't come from him - it came from the memory-him. The helplessness, the powerlessness was crushing, worse than gravity, worse than everything.

_'He couldn't help. Why?'_ Arrom asked, horrified. _'He's just there, and I can feel it, he has the power too - so much more than I do - and yet… he can't do_ anything_ at all!'_

_'I don't know. But look around us. I don't think these people even_ see _him. It's like he, you, weren't here at all,'_ Harry said, squeezing his hand tightly. He turned away as the whip lashed across the old man's back once more, tugging Arrom away too, away from the horrifying sight. _'Arrom, I think this is your memory of the planet.'_

_'Y-yeah,'_ the elder man agreed, bowing his head, shaking slightly. _'Those people, the youth and the old man, I know them somehow,'_ he added. _'I wanted to save them and it killed me that I couldn't.'_

Harry looked at him seriously, his green eyes darker than Arrom had ever seen them. _'Do you think they are still down there?'_ he asked and shuddering Arrom nodded, absolutely certain of it. He could feel it - the secrecy and security surrounding the planet, one more reason for his helplessness. The people had tried to escape, he was certain of it, but they had been caught before they could, and turned into slaves.

Harry winced slightly, and Arrom remembered sharply the spike memory he had gotten when Harry had been showing him the Willow's birth - apparently it worked the other way too. _'Okay,'_ the younger man said, clasping him by the shoulders. _'You couldn't save them then. Something stopped you. But we can do it now.'_

_'We can?'_ Arrom asked, surprised. He glanced around. _'But the soldiers… there's so many of them.'_

_'Not impossibly many. I've worked against worse odds,'_ Harry said, absolutely serious and so intent that it made the memory around them shudder, and fade. _'It's not like we could just leave, not after knowing this. I certainly couldn't, and neither could you. And if you know those people, if they know you, then we might get a clue as to where we should go, where we can find the others of your kind.'_

_'I… I didn't even think of that,'_ Arrom admitted, hanging his head a little and sighing. _'Can… can we really save them?'_

_'Yes,'_ Harry answered with absolute certainty, and tugged him into the Willow's surging mind. _'__Willow__, will you help us?'_ he called to the great tree. Arrom could feel the tree shuddering around them, the mighty force of its will and magic rising - more than willing to help.

The next moment - Arrom had no idea how long it as, it could've been a second or a year - was the most intense of Arrom's life. He had felt Harry's and the Willow's communion several times before, but not with such force. The two of them entwined into each other's thoughts with such force and determination, that for a moment Arrom was terrified that they couldn't be separated again. And so, together and more a single entity than two separate ones, Harry and the Willow went through Arrom's memory over and over and over until they had learned all they could from it. And then they planned.

When they slipped out of the Willow, Arrom felt a little unsteady and dizzy - and stronger than he had ever felt as far as he could remember. Beside him Harry was brimming with power - either magic or sheer force of will, Arrom didn't know which, neither did he really care. The two could've been the same thing for him right now, they certainly felt the same.

"We can do this," Harry said, while the Willow rustled its branches and then begun making it's way to down to the planet. "We can definitely do this."

Standing up and shaking the last of his confusion away, Arrom nodded. He could feel the plan, glowing in the back of his head, bright and certain and fairly messy but very powerful. "We can," he agreed, and together they watched as the planet came closer and closer.

x

The Willow didn't land - instead it remained hovering just above the slave camp, where Harry and Arrom looked down, grimacing and hating every moment they had to wait, but knowing that rushing in now wouldn't do them any services. It was unbearable to watch how the workers were pushed and whipped at the slightest reason, but they did. They needed to wait until was dark and then make contact with the two of Arrom's memory, to tell them of their plan.

"How can anyone do this?" Arrom whispered, gripping Harry's hand which seemed like it hadn't left his since the memory.

"I don't know. Evil is something I never understood," Harry murmured back and together they winced as one of the workers fell under her burden and was immediately punished for it. Grimacing, the younger man shifted back. "Come, let's get something to eat. We need our strength."

They ate the food unprepared and raw, neither having much appetite but knowing they really did need it. It would be difficult performing magic outside the influence of the Willow, but they would need every single spell they could muster for their plan to work. Most of it would be Harry's, of course, he knew so much more magic than Arrom did, but Arrom knew he couldn't afford anything less than his very best effort.

It seemed to take forever until the night fell, but one it did, they found to their relief that it was even darker than they had hoped for, sending the camp nearly complete blackness that was only breached by some torches lit here and there. It was perfect for their plan.

"Come here. Let's disillusion," Harry said, and together they kneeled by the Willow. Arrom knew the spells Harry and the Willow wove over the two of them - no, three of them, the Willow got covered by them too. Feeling it was different from knowing it, though. First came the notice-me-not charms, which would make them invisible to anyone who did not know where they were. Then the muggle repellent charms, which might or might not work on the people of the slave camp, but couldn't hurt. Finally, Harry and the Willow mixed their knowledge and magic together and synthesized mixture of disillusionment charm and a cloaking field, turning all three of them even more invisible that they already were.

"Let's go," Harry said, his hand still in Arrom's even though Arrom could no longer see him. Arrom let himself be tugged up, and as they watched, the Willow slowly turned upside down, until the island was towards the sky, and the Willow itself was towards the ground. It felt oddly like standing on the ceiling, as they remained still in the Willow's gravity and thus complete opposite to the world which now seemed to be above them.

Then, still holding hands because it was the only way to keep track of each other, Harry and Arrom climbed up the Willow's trunk, and towards the planet's surface directly above them. They climbed higher than Arrom ever had - usually they only needed to reach the lowest of the Willow's branches - but it was experience Arrom didn't stay around musing. Once they were on the topmost branches, the Willow itself moved to assist them, as two thick branches moved forward and towards them, lifting them first up form the Willow, and then dropping them out of it's gravity, and through the shield of the Willow's invisibility to the real ground and gravity below.

It was strange to know that the Willow was just above them - and _upside down_ - but there was no time to wonder about it. With Harry tugging urgently on his hand, Arrom moved forward and together they silently ran to the nearest tent, to see if it was the one where the two Arrom knew would be there. They weren't, and after carefully backing away, they hurried to the next tent and the next, peaking in through any opening they didn't have to disturb too badly to see through, until they find the right one.

It was tent of maybe twenty or so people, all workers who were recovering from their day of work. Arrom felt sympathy squeezing his stomach, as he watched them share their meagre food with those worse injured, while rending to cuts on their backs and sores on their hands and feet. Many were simply collapsed on the tent floor, too tired to do much but lay and wait for sleep.

And then there were the two Arrom knew, but couldn't remember. The old man with metal head-cover, with a golden symbol on his forehead whilst the others had black tattoos of varying kind. The young man with dark skin and a tattoo just like the old man's golden symbol. They were resting in the corner of the tent, both looking tired and beaten.

Arrom was the one who tugged Harry this time, and together they sneaked into the tent and around the other people. The old man frowned as they approached, and reached for a wooden stick that rested on the floor beside. Arrom knew without needing any more evidence that the old man could sense them, and while Harry's fingers tightened around his, Arrom shifted forward. "Do not be alarmed," he whispered. "We're friends."

The old man tensed and the youth nearly jumped up, but immediately the elder of the two clamped his hand around the youth's knee, holding him forcefully down. "I cannot see you. How -?"

"It's a long story, too long to tell," Harry spoke next, and Arrom could see an impression on the old man's ragged cloak, where Harry rested his hand on the man's shoulder. "We're here to set you free, but we need to act quickly and there is no time for answers. How many slaves are there?"

"Almost two hundred - all whom are tired and weary but wish nothing more than their freedom," the old man answered under his breath, urging the alarmed looking younger man to calm down with a sharp look. The boy immediately turned his eyes away, hiding his expression even while remaining alert. "How many are of you?" the old man asked.

"Just three, but that's more than enough," Harry said. "How many guards are there?"

"I have counted fifty, but there might be more - and they are all armed and in good health and strength," the young man said, frowning into his bowl of bland looking food. "How can you help us, when there are only three of you? Do you have any weapons?"

"That is not an issue," Harry answered. "Can you get a message to the other slaves? They need to be prepared when the time comes."

"Prepared to fight?" the old man asked.

"To duck," Arrom answered. "When the time comes, they all need to lie down and stay down in the ground no matter what happens, otherwise they might get wounded. Even if the camp would be set aflame, they need to stay on the ground. Can you get the message to others?"

The old man frowned, looking at the air before him confusedly. "We can, but how do we know when?"

"The guards will probably sound an alarm, if not then the chaos that will ensue should be sign enough," Arrom said, already feeling Harry tugging him up and back to his feet. "Get the message around as fast as you can. We want to do this when it's still dark," he said. "We need to go now."

"Good luck," the old man said, determined despite no doubt being very confused. Arrom could hear him and the young man exchanging words behind them before Harry tugged him up and out of the tent.

Together they went around the horrible campsite, checking it out to make sure that everything would work as planned. Mostly it was Harry doing the checking, as he needed to do the spell work too. Arrom followed right next to him, still holding his hand even while keeping his eyes on the surroundings while Harry checked the burning furnace and the tents, setting down some ground work in form of the Willow's leafs, buried beneath thin layer of dirt. They would help his magic work, Arrom knew - they would work as the fuel for the spells that would otherwise reach only so far.

"How long do you think it will take for them to get the message through to everyone else?" Harry asked under his breath, as they hid behind some crates to wait.

"I don't know. Let's give them an hour," Arrom said a little nervously. The smell of the campsite - hard and burning, metal and blood and fire mixed together - was getting to him, and he longed for the fresh, pure smell of the island. He hadn't even realised how good it smelled in their small home, until now.

"Alright," Harry murmured.

Then they waited, tense and worried. Around them the guards moved in the campsite, changing positions. A pale haired, one eyed man Arrom recalled seeing in the memory went around the campsite too, snarling at the other guards in sharp, vile words that Arrom found with shock he could understand. He listened, bewildered and a little worried, as the pale man called the other names, telling he was slacking in his work and would be removed from his station if he didn't work harder.

"What is it?" Harry whispered, after having felt the clenching of Arrom's hand.

"I think… I think I opened another door," Arrom whispered back, a little tense now. "I can understand what they are saying."

"Another language. You seem to have a talent with them," Harry murmured. "We'll see to it later. Let's concentrate onto this, now."

Arrom nodded and when he remembered that Harry couldn't see him, he squeezed his hand instead. Across the camp they could hear someone's wail of pain, followed by the sound of a whip going. As Arrom tensed again, desperately wanting to go there and test how well his magic worked against humans, he could feel Harry, trying to distract him by rubbing his thumb across the back of his hand.

"Soon," Harry whispered to him.

They waited, and waited and it was absolutely horrible. It wasn't just the random sound of abuse, but also the quiet moaning of those who weren't quite recovering from the day's activities. The entire camp seemed to be full of nothing but pain and misery - it was making the very air thick around them. Arrom was just starting to think that he wouldn't be able to handle it for long, when he felt Harry squeezing his hand, and tugging him upwards. It was time.

The few short moments it took them to walk from their hiding place to the blast furnace were long and tense and anxious - and then broke into a cacophony of noise as Harry set their plan in motion with a hissed spell, powered by the hidden leaves everywhere in the camp, and the Willow's close proximity. The blast furnace groaned - and then blew up in magnificent show of heat and colour, lighting the entire camp with the flames that eagerly reached up in tornado of flames, licking the sky and the stars.

It was such a magnificent and horrifying sight, so unbelievable that for a moment Arrom completely forgot that it wasn't in fact real at all.

The chaos broke out immediately after, because while Arrom and Harry knew that the fire was mere illusion, no one else did. The guards did sound the alarm and more guards came rushing in, while the fire eagerly spread across the hidden leaves and to the tent, seemingly setting everything in its wake into roaring flames. Arrom watched, fascinated and horrified as the flames seemed to consume everything, while beside him Harry murmured spell after spell, and begun filling the camp with thick, dark smoke that made it impossible to see anything at all.

Everything was covered by smoke that the red glow of the illusionary fires only made harder to see through. The guard's worked fast, however - or they tried to - as they tried to put the fire under control and stop everything from burning down. Arrom was both surprised and relieved to see that the Guard's didn't try to get the slaves to the work of putting out of the fire - they didn't even try to go near the slave tents, not now that they were all seemingly in flames. And, thankfully, not a single slave came out of the tents, and instead they remained there, hopefully all in the ground, all taking cover.

"Okay, now," Harry said, shifting and pressing his back against Arrom's, who immediately released his hand and concentrated. Behind him he could feel Harry's strength, physical, mental and magical all blended together, as the other begun firing spell after spell, some of them working while others did nothing. Then Arrom could no longer concentrate onto him, because he had his own work to do.

Concentrating harder than he ever had, he build up his will and his magic and begun using the ability of levitation - _telekinesis_ a distant part of his brain whispered. He took a guard's staff and knocked the man out of with it. Next to him, two guards too close together were knocked together by Arrom's will, their heads colliding and sending them into unconsciousness. Not far from them, Arrom lifted a heavy piece of stone from a cart near by and send it flying across and to one guard's temple, knocking him out as well.

Before any of the guard's understood what had happened, the Willow had entered the fray from above them, turning what was one-sided fight into perfect slaughter. Or so it seemed - Arrom would've been perfectly horrified if he hadn't known that the Willow had no intention of killing. Still, the effect was bad enough, only making the chaos worse.

Invisible branches flew our, destroying the weaponry of the guard station with single wide sweep, all the while in another side other branches were knocking people over and snatching them up, releasing them only after they had stopped fighting back. In an instant it seemed, there was not a single guard left on their feet - they were either screaming and in the air, squeezed by invisible bonds, or they were already in the ground, unmoving, unfit to fight.

Trees like the Willow weren't called Whomping Willows for nothing, it seemed.

"Alright, let's take out the ship," Harry said behind Arrom, who agreed. Together they turned to the carts of stone that had been left behind by the workers in the previous day. Arrom used his will, Harry his magic, and from above the Willow's branches moved to aid and together they lifted the carts and together they threw them one after another, right at the unfinished ship that was hovering not far. Still without any defences and any shields, the mothership was completely helpless against the bombardment, as crude as it was, and with no less than three of the cards, they managed to break the antigravity platform, and bring the ship crashing down.

Then it was over, and all they were left was exhaustion, a camp which still seemed to be burning, and dozens of unconscious guards scattered all around them.

"Finite," Harry said and the Willow rustled above them. The fires went out instantly, rippled out of existence by wave of negating magic, and the smoke Harry had created immediately vanished, leaving the camp more or less in the way they had found it. Some of the tents had been knocked down, either by the guards or by the Willow's wild attack, Arrom didn't know, but aside from that and aside from the unconscious guards, everything was still intact.

After moment of stillness, Harry sighed, and slumped against Arrom's back, almost sending both of them falling over. Quickly the elder man turned, surprised to find the younger man visible once more. "Are you alright?" he asked, wrapping his arms around him to keep him upright.

"Kind of tired. Casting spells outside the Willow's shield, even when this close to it, isn't easy. And I've never been good with illusions," Harry answered, his wand hand falling. "Please tell me we got them all."

"I think we did," Arrom said, kneeling slowly down and easing Harry to sit on the ground, to take the strain off his feet. "Rest," he told him, before raising his head. "It's over! You can come out now!" he called to the tents, to the slaves.

While Harry leaned against his chest, breathing slightly more heavily than he usually did, the prisoners begun coming out of their mostly collapsed tents, gingerly looking around. They were all wide eyed and shocked, not that Arrom blamed them. Moments ago they had probably thought they'd be burned to death.

"Secure the guards!" he could hear the old man from his memory yelling. "Take their weapons! Quick!"

More than glad that someone was taking control of the situation now that his and Harry's energy reserves were more or less spend, Arrom relaxed, concentrating onto his companion while the former slaves went around the camp, stripping the unconscious guards of their weapons and gear.

"You are the ones who did this?" the old man said, approaching them. "I do not know how you did this, but we are forever in your debt. Are you injured?"

"No, only very tired," Arrom answered, looking up. He knew immediately that the old man recognised him, knew him, but he didn't have any energy left to get excited about it. "Are prisoners alright?"

"Confused, but more than alright now that they have their freedom," the old man said, blinking. "I did not realise it was you, Daniel Jackson. I did not recognise your voice," he frowned and glanced around them. "The others are not here?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about," Arrom answered, glancing down to Harry. The younger man had fallen asleep against his chest - not that Arrom was very surprised. He hadn't realised that the strain would be too great, though. Harry did spells so easily in the island.

"Doctor Jackson?" another voice spoke out - the dark skinned youth was now jogging towards them, holding one of the staff weapons in his hand. "It was you! Is my father here?"

Arrom sighed and glanced up. "I'm sorry," he said.

"What?" the youth asked, confused.

"You do not recognise us?" the old man asked, taking in his face seriously, his expression.

"I do not. I cannot remember anything but the last couple of moons," Arrom admitted, shifting into more comfortable seated position, and easing Harry more comfortably across his lap. "I know I knew you, before. When we were on orbit above this planet, I remembered something - remembered you being here - but that is all."

"You came here on ship?" the young man asked, while the elder one crouched down beside Harry and Arrom.

"You know you knew us, but you do not remember - and yet, you helped us?" the old man asked, and nodded, reaching out one, work stained and calloused hand, and resting it on Arrom's shoulder. "Then you are still the Daniel Jackson I know, and I am still very grateful," he said simply, and then glanced at Harry. "Is your companion alright?"

"Just tired. He created the flames you saw before, it tired him greatly," Arrom answered, and smiled awkwardly. Daniel Jackson? Was that his name? It sounded so strange. "I am… I have been called Arrom since I lost my memories. And my companion's name is Harry. What are your names?" he asked, glancing between the old man and the youth.

"I am Bra'tac, and this Rya'c. Before you lost your memories, you were part of a team that had my student and Rya'c father, Teal'c, in it, and that is how we know each other. We have fought side by side many times before," the old man said, nodding. "I do not know how you knew that we'd be here or how you have lost your memories, but I am very grateful. Please. Let us make our way to the chappa-ai and contact the Tauri. I am sure they are anxious to see you again."

"The Tauri?" Arrom asked, confused and a little worried.

"Your people. Tauri is the world you come from - I believe your people call it the Earth," Bra'tac said, and Arrom's eyes widened. "You remember?"

"No, but I know of Earth. If it is the same Earth," Arrom murmured, frowning and looking at Harry. The young man looked shockingly pale in the torch light. He swallowed and then shook his head. "No. If Earth is my birth home, then I will not return there," he said, giving his slumbering companion a thoughtful look. Harry was fairly small man - and very slim, thanks to a diet of fruits and such. "I will continue my journey with Harry," Arrom said and, after a moment of consideration, eased his arms around Harry, carefully lifting him up to his arms and then standing up

"You do not wish to return home?" Rya'c asked, frowning. "Surely you must, even if you cannot remember it. Perhaps your memories will return there."

"Even if they would, it wouldn't be enough. I will not leave what I've found since - what has found me. Not for Earth," Arrom said, looking down to Harry. The younger man needed to get back to Willow - being around the Willow's magic would help him. "I need to take Harry to the Willow to recover," he said.

"The… Willow is your ship?" Bra'tac asked. "Where is it? We can escort you there."

"There is no need - the Willow is right here," Arrom smiled, and glanced upwards. Hearing his words, the Willow released the barrier of invisibility covering it, and revealed itself not only to him, but to a camp full of amazed, shocked former slaves. The island had straightened itself since the battle, and was no longer upside down - which was perhaps good, as it would've been fairly confusing sight, if it was still wrong way around. It seemed no less impressive, though, and Bra'tac and Rya'c both took a surprised step backwards, eyes wide and mouths open, as they saw the floating island and its great tree.

"What… what is this?" Bra'tac asked, squeezing his staff weapon hard, while the freed slaves around them looked like they weren't sure if they were meant to aim their weapons at the Willow or not. "How is this possible? I have never before seen anything like this."

"I wouldn't be surprised - the Willow is only one of its kind," Arrom answered, holding Harry more securely in his arms while looking up, not quite sure how he would get up there. As he watched, the Willow seemed to sense his need - and begun weaving a rough but usable staircase from its roots so that he could simply walk up to the island, going as far as to make a handles at each side of the stairs.

"Chel nak," Rya'c murmured, wide eyed and amazed.

"Yes, it is," Arrom agreed with a smile, stepping forward and trying to root-stairs. He hadn't really doubted the Willow, but it was still relief to find them strong and steady. He glanced over his shoulder. "I will be right back."

"We will wait," Bra'tac nodded, still a little wide eyed, as Arrom begun making his way up towards the island across the root-staircase, sheltering Harry gently against his chest. Once he made it up to the island proper, he carried Harry to the Willow's base, resting him in a spot where the large roots formed a sort of hollow - where Harry often sat.

The moment his head touched the tree, Harry's eyes fluttered open heavily. "Arr'm?" he mumbled.

"Yes. It's alright. Rest, regain your strength," the elder man said, quickly fetching a blanket from his tent and spreading it over the younger man. "I will go down to planet to talk with the prisoners we saved. Do you need anything?"

"Just few hours of sleep," the younger man said, yawning and nuzzling his cheek against the Willow's root. "You'll be okay?"

"I'll be fine. Sleep," Arrom said gently. He watched until Harry slid back to slumber, before standing up and returning to the root-stairs, and down to the camp just below the flying island.

"Will your companion recover?" Bra'tac asked as he stepped down, still looking at the island like he didn't quite believe he was actually seeing there, floating in the air just above him. Near him, some of the former prisoners were circling it now with open fascination, some even daring to go under it to see the spike of the hyperdrive thruster protruding from the Earth and net of roots.

"With some rest he will be fine," Arrom nodded, looking around. "Everyone has been liberated and the guard's secured? You will be able to make your escape from here, right?"

"Yes. There are those who will need help when we leave this planet behind, but we will manage it," Bra'tac nodded, leaning to a staff weapon he had probably taken from one of the guards, just like all the other prisoners. "Now that the guards have been taken down, and we have the signal device that will open the shield of the chappa-ai, leaving will be easy," he added, though he was frowning. "But I still think you should come with us and return to the Tauri. They can help you."

"No," Arrom said, shaking his head. "I will stay with the Willow, and leave with it."

"Why?" the old man asked, casting a glance upwards. "It is a magnificent sight to behold, but one would think you would wish to remember who you are."

"I do. Eventually I might. But I won't leave Harry to do that," Arrom said, sighing. He glanced the elder man with a frown. "Do you know how I ended up without memories?" he asked.

"I do not. We have been here for many weeks now, in that time we have had no news," the warrior admitted. "I do not think it is something the Tauri would have done, in any case. They value your skills too much for such a deed."

Arrom nodded, a little relieved by that even if he didn't know whether or not to trust the words. "I thank you for telling me. Knowing where I come from will help me figure out where I go from here." He bowed his head. "So thank you."

After a moment of awkward, distraught staring, Bra'tac returned the gesture. "It is we who should be thanking you; you liberated us and gave us back our freedom. I will not forget this, Daniel Jackson - or Arrom, if that is what you prefer," he said, bowing his head. "I will tell Tauri of this encounter. They will not be happy to know you did not wish to return, but if they think you are dead then knowing that you are not will relieve them."

Arrom had no idea what to say to that - he had never even considered that someone might miss him, be worried about him. After all, hadn't it been his people who had left him without memories in the planet of the ruins? Perhaps not. "Thank you. Maybe one day I will meet the ones you speak of. Maybe one day I will remember what makes your words valuable."

"I hope that day will come soon," Bra'tac nodded.

Arrom nodded as well, looking around them. It seemed like the prisoners were getting ready to leave - they were quickly making stretchers for those who couldn't walk, and bundling up what they could carry to take with them. Rya'c was helping them, making another stretcher together with couple of other former prisoners. "What are they like?" Arrom asked. "The people I left behind when I lost my memories?"

Bra'tac thought about it for a moment. "Conflicted, but good at heart. They are warriors and scholars, driven by wanderlust and curiosity. But it is also thanks to them that many false gods have fallen. Ra, Apophis, Hathor, Heru-ur…" he nodded. "I am proud to know them, and call them my allies."

"And I?" Arrom asked, curious despite himself.

"You are… were a scholar. Student of old civilisations and languages - but with a spirit of a warrior," the old man said, giving him a look. "Considering how important learning always seemed to you, I find it strange that you do not wish to return to Tauri."

"It's not that I'm against learning - especially about myself. I do want to know. But not at the cost of losing what I now have," the other man answered, shaking his head and looking up to the Willow. "My life is still incomplete and my memory is full of holes, but my life on the Willow is not something I'm willing to give up. Not yet. Maybe not ever."

"Maybe once you remember, you will change your mind," the warrior mused.

"Maybe, but I doubt it," Arrom shrugged - a gesture he had learned from Harry. He looked around them, and to the preparations by the other former slaves. "I guess you'll be leaving pretty soon."

"As soon as possible. It might be that what happened did not go down so quietly - any moment now, ships might come to secure the camp once more. The sooner we leave, the safer it is for us," Bra'tac answered, frowning at him. "If you truly do not intend to come with us, I suggest you board this… island of yours and leave the way you came. I do not know what powers this Willow has, but I would rest easier knowing that they - and you - were nowhere in Ba'al's reach."

"As would I," Arrom agreed, and turned to the old warrior. "You might think me a coward for not returning to the… Tauri, but regardless, I will remember you, Bra'tac, I will remember what you told me."

"I do not think of you a coward - I am only confused and disappointed to hear that you no longer ally yourself with the Tauri. But whatever journey you have ahead of you is important you, and I will respect that." Bra'tac said, holding out his hand. "I wish you good luck on that journey, Arrom of the Willow, where ever you are going. Perhaps one day we will meet again."

"Perhaps," Arrom nodded and took the hand, clasping the old man by the forearm in a warrior's handshake. Bra'tac gave him a grim look - not quite a smile or a frown, but something in between - and Arrom bowed his head in return. "Good luck to you too, Bra'tac. You and the others here. May your fortune be better than it has been - may freedom be yours."

The old man blinked with surprise and then nodded gravely. "May it be all ours."

Arrom nodded, and backed away. After one last look, he turned to walk back up the natural stairs and to the Island, while the Willow untangled its roots behind him, withdrawing the stairs as soon as he had stepped over them. Behind him he could hear Bra'tac calling over the camp, ushering the former slaves to proceed faster so that they could leave, and smiled, comforted by the knowledge that they had done something good - something great - as saving hundreds of lives.

As he walked back to still slumbering Harry, feeling the Willow humming with energy and preparing to take off once more, he found himself regretting the departure very little. Even if Bra'tac and Rya'c knew him and had welcomed him to joint them, knowing who he was and where he came from was secondary to Harry's good health - and it mattered even less if he truly came from Earth. After all, it wasn't like he was going to return there, to a powerless planet like that.

Around him the Willow rouse the shield, and gently pushed upwards and away from the camp, careful not to damage any of the people below with the take off's heat or radiation. Arrom sat down beside Harry and rested against the Willow's trunk; oddly soothed by the knowledge that now it was because of his own choice he was there. He had been offered a place, a home - his own original home, Earth, where people apparently _missed_ him. But he had decided not to accept it - and that, somehow, made his life on the island more important, more real, than it had been before.

It was like the Azul said. Home was rarely the place you were born in or where you were kept - it was a place you chose.

xx

There we go, some other SG1 characters and a name. I hope the fight scene wasn't too weird. To answer some questions; more SG1 characters later, yes, they will meet SG1 eventually too, Harry is 23 years old, Arrom/Daniel is 38 and the year is 2003 - so Harry was 18 when he got stranded in the alternate universe of Stargate.

Next chapter will have slashy slashiness so be slashlikely warned.

My apologies for possible grammar errors.


	4. Chapter four

Warnings; Slash, amnesia, OOCness, Spoilers. AU version of SG1 season seven, starting from episode "Fallen". Slashy slashiness in this chapter.

**Astral Synthesis**

**Chapter four**

When Harry woke up, the Willow was already back in hyperspace, making way for the next habitable planet. Arrom had taken the time to write down what he had learned from Bra'tac and Rya'c, which was both aplenty and not that much at the same time. Still, he wrote it all meticulously down, even going as far as to make some hypothesis from it, even if he was still missing lot of information and what he had made little sense.

Like the fact that he came from a magicless planet and still he somehow possessed that force, the force which Harry was absolutely certain could only bloom on magical worlds. And not only was he from magicless world, apparently - but it was the very same planet Harry came from, albeit this reality's one. It seemed… well, ridiculous was one term for it. Puzzling was another.

Only thing that sounded even remotely plausible was what Bra'tac had said about him being a scholar, and student of languages. _That_ resonated somewhere deep in Arrom, behind some locked door - and in the open ones. Like the writing from the ruins of the world where he had woken up in, and the how written English had came to him when he hadn't even realised he was reading it - and how he had suddenly just understood Goa'uld after hearing handful of words… he could even write it now, if he concentrated a little.

A warrior, though… he didn't know if he believed that one.

Arrom was writing the name Daniel Jackson over and over and trying to get a feel to it, when Harry finally woke up. The young man groaned softly where he lay, in the crook of the Willow's roots, mumbling, "Arrom?"

"Hey," Arrom said, abandoning the writing and letting the charcoal fall. Even though his hand managed to write the name oh so very easily in dozen different ways, it hadn't made it feel any more real and he found himself more than happy to have an excuse to abandon the task.

"What's going on?" Harry asked, stretching against the roots and nearly getting tangled in the duvet Arrom had covered him with. He blinked blearily at the island's edge, where the blue-hued whirl of the hyperspace surrounded them. "We left already?"

"Yes. The old man of my memory - Bra'tac - said that staying too long would be unwise - more of the guards might've come to secure the camp. And if they would've came on ships, we would've been in trouble. I thought departure would be the wisest option - and the Willow seemed to agree with me," Arrom answered, standing up from the bench where he had been writing, and approaching his younger companion. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. Got a bit of a headache, but that'll go away soon enough," Harry answered, settling his hands down and blinking idly, not even trying to sit up. Which was probably good - he didn't look completely awake yet. "I'm sorry I missed what happened," Harry said apologetically. "Was the camp liberated? Did you learn anything from… Bra'tac?"

"All the prisoners were released, yes, and Bra'tac assured me they'd all be able to escape the planet. And I did," Arrom agreed, kneeling beside him. He smiled awkwardly, still not sure what to think of what he had learned, but more than willing to share. Maybe, if he said it all aloud, it would feel more real to him. "Bra'tac said that I knew him and the youth, Rya'c, through Bra'tac's student. Teal'c, I think was the name. He, apparently, is a friend of mine and a team mate, and we've fought together with Bra'tac many times."

"Fought?" Harry asked, blinking up to him considering. "Yeah, I can see that happening," he nodded after a moment, before frowning. "Did he know your name? Where you come from?"

Arrom nodded, sighing. "My real name is, apparently, Daniel Jackson. Or Doctor Jackson - they called me both," he said quietly. No, saying it out loud didn't make it any more real - it sounded like he was talking about some one else, a stranger named Daniel Jackson, whom he had never heard of, never met. He shook his head and gave the younger man a sideways look. "They… they said I came from Earth."

Harry blinked before frowning. "Earth?" he asked and with a grunt pulled himself up and into a seated position. "But Earth is a magicless planet."

"That's what they said," Arrom shrugged. "But it did sound strange to me too, impossible, especially after what you've told me of Earth," he added, shifting around so that he could lean against the Willow's trunk. The surge of energy behind his back was comforting, soothing. "Maybe I just lived on Earth - but was born somewhere else?"

The younger man didn't say anything for a long while, considering it. "Daniel Jackson," he said finally, running his hand over his eyes, knocking his glasses askew. "It _is_ an Earth name. And doctor is a title - either of a healer or a learned scientist or scholar. It could explain your knowledge of space and the expertise of languages."

Arrom swallowed, nodding awkwardly. "Bra'tac said I was student of ancient civilisations and languages," he murmured, staring at the ground before him awkwardly.

"So… archaeologist and linguistic?" Harry sighed, nodding to himself thoughtfully. "It would make sense, considering your fascination about the ancient text in the ruins of the Azul. And… and there is the odd feeling with your magic. The newness of it. Maybe you didn't always have it after all, maybe you… gained it just recently."

"Is that possible?" Arrom asked.

"I don't know - but considering this… well, I wouldn't dare to say it _wasn't_," Harry said, motioning around them. He was quiet for a moment, as was Arrom, both of them just thinking about it - and what it meant.

"So, I'm not from a magical culture," Arrom finally said what they were both thinking, pulling his knees up and leaning his elbows to them. "My home planet isn't the one we're looking for. It's the one you left behind four years ago."

"Yeah," Harry murmured, glancing at it. "But if you were born on earth - and you somehow gained magic _afterwards_, then maybe other people could've too. Somehow," he suggested. Then a thought seemed to come to him, and he quickly straightened his glasses. "Did Bra'tac know anything about that? Or maybe about how you lost your memories?"

"No. Bra'tac and Rya'c were both made slaves before I lost my memories. And I… I forgot to ask," Arrom admitted, now a little embarrassed. "I didn't mean to, but he was telling me how my people were explorers, warriors and scholars - and how they had felled many false gods. I got distracted. And then he wanted to take me back to them, to that team. He said that they appreciated my knowledge - that they would miss me."

Harry blinked, the look of disappointment fading from his face abruptly. "And you didn't go?" he asked incredulously.

Arrom paused at that and then turned to look at him. "No," he said slowly. "I don't want to leave the Willow for a magicless planet. Even if it was my birth planet." For a moment he was quiet, just looking at the younger man whose expression was too complicated to discern. "Would you have wanted me to go?"

"No. Of course not," Harry assured him, but the complicated expression didn't falter - and Arrom couldn't tell if he was telling the truth or not. "But a _team_ - and your memories…"

"My memories are unlocking without Earth," Arrom shrugged. "Maybe if they all do, I might want to go back to Earth, but I doubt it. I want… I want to stay. If it's alright."

"Of course it is. Of course," Harry whispered, turning his eyes away and staring at his hands instead. Then he smiled small, awkward smile, and shook his head. "Do you think you unlocked anything during the encounter? You remembered that language…"

"Can we check?" Arrom asked, hoping that it would give him some insight as to what was bothering the younger man - he didn't seem too happy by the turn of events, and Arrom hated to think it was because of him.

"Sure," Harry agreed, and leaned against the Willow, closing his eyes. A moment later, he drew Arrom in as well, and together they moved into his mind.

The amount of open doors surprises Arrom, even if he knows that many of them were already open. The magic, English writing, his knowledge of space, the memory of Bra'tac and Rya'c - and now, the knowledge of Goa'uld language, and couple of others odd, foreign languages which he seemed to know well enough to speak and write them. Then there was something else, something that surprised him a little - but made sense, if Bra'tac had been in earnest. Knowledge of weapons - he had once fired one of those staff weapons - flooded him, and he could remember holding odd hand devices countless of times, of aiming them like Harry aimed his wand, of firing them. There was also knowledge of the Chappa-ai - he knew it was mostly made of Naquadah, he knew how it worked, and that he had gone through it countless of times.

_'The language,'_ Harry said, motioning, and suddenly Arrom found himself surrounded by the text, so much text, all of what he had read and forgotten, all of what he had read and not understood. There were snatches of papers, of walls, of light - of the ruins near the Azul village - which he had seen and not understood. The language of the Ancients, his mind supplied, as he remembered and _remembered_ and suddenly also understood.

_'The Ancients,'_ Arrom murmured with surprise, trying to remember. The language was that of the Ancients, but… who were the Ancients? It felt important, extremely important… maybe as important as saving Bra'tac and Rya'c had been. But that was all he could get out of the memory, just a sensation of importance, significance.

Shaking the thought and letting it stray away - he could look into it later and really, after all the trouble this language had given him before, he was too tired with trying to force it. It would come if it did. Instead he turned back to the memories of chappa-ai - of going in and coming through, going in and coming through, again and again.

_'How many worlds_ are _there?'_ he asked with fascination as his mind remembered dozens of first glimpses of dozens of planets - of forests, of ruins, of altars, of mountains, cities, villages, endless sands and endless water, of moons and stars and sometimes multiple suns. He was so amazed by the countless of memories that he wasn't even that bothered by the shortness of the memories - or the fact that they seemed to be mere fraction of what they should've been, mere glimpses. There were _so_ many of them. Just how many worlds had he seen and then forgotten?

_'Maybe you really were an explorer,'_ Harry said, sounding amazed.

_'Maybe,'_ Arrom agreed, trying to concentrate enough to freeze one of the many memories - and finally managing to stop it just as another memory revealed itself, this one of a grassy field with a mountain overlooking it. There were no people in the memory - not even him - but if these were only his first sights of these worlds, it made sense.

_'How many worlds have you seen?'_ Arrom asked, turning to the younger man.

_'I don't know. Forty, fifty, maybe more? I haven't really counted - and I've only landed on about twenty or so,'_ Harry said, he too staring at the memory in front of them. _'I'm not sure if I've seen this one, though. It doesn't look familiar, but I might be wrong.'_

_'Imagine if all the worlds I've apparently gone through aren't ones you've seen - imagine if that's only the beginning. What if there are hundreds of worlds out there? Or thousands?'_ Arrom asked, feeling a spark of excitement at the thought. He had thought he had finally understood how vast the galaxy was - but maybe he had still only seen fraction of it. Maybe it was bigger than he had ever even considered, much bigger.

_'You want to explore them?'_ Harry asked, giving him an odd look.

_'Yes, of course - but if there are thousands of worlds out there, there's got to be one out there with magic on it,'_ Arrom said. _'I mean… it would be very strange if there wasn't, wouldn't it? With so many worlds. Maybe there's one out there where people can get magic, maybe that's how I got mine? Imagine, a planet that isn't just magical, but can _produce_ magic.'_

He turned to the younger man, who blinked sharply at him. _'That sounds a bit fantastic, even to me,'_ Harry mused, frowning a little. _'A planet like that would be probably well known - I would've heard rumours about it by now. And it wouldn't explain everything - not your memory loss, or how you got stranded from Earth.'_

_'No, of course not,'_ Arrom agreed, smiling. _'But doesn't it seem like we've only begun this search?'_

_'Even though you now know where you're from?'_ Harry asked quietly.

The elder man shrugged. _'You know where you're from too,'_ he pointed out, and let the memory shift into next one - a planet where the chappa-ai was surrounded by trees with red and pink leaves. _'Well, this is an interesting one,'_ he said, and chuckled. Even the grass in the world of his memory was pink. _'I wonder if the rest of this world looks like this… do you think we might run into this place at some point?'_

Harry didn't answer - and suddenly, Arrom glimpsed something else, something that wasn't coming from him, that thoroughly distracted him from the pink grass of the memory-world. He turned to Harry with surprise, to see the younger man quickly retreating. _'This is private. I'll, just… I'll leave you to it,'_ Harry said and then he was gone, leaving Arrom in the pink world alone with his thoughts - and with the feeling of the sharp uneasiness that he was absolutely sure had came from Harry.

_'Huh?'_ Arrom asked, wide eyed as his earlier line of thought completely faded away. His head was still ringing from the emotion that hadn't been his - it was so heavy that he nearly felt nauseous with it. Harry felt like that? Why? Because of the pink world? No, that couldn't be it, that was just silly. Then why…? Had Arrom done something, said something?

_'… huh?'_ he asked again and after a moment of thought, but in the deep connection of his memories there was only him.

x

When Arrom returned to his body, Harry had left his side and was across the island, preparing his utensils for some food. There was odd stiffness to his back, and any thought Arrom had had about approaching him and asking what he had been thinking back in the memory, faded. Instead Arrom gave him a worried look before returning to his writing, and adding what he had learned in his mind, what doors he had unlocked.

Odd, uneasy silence had fallen over the island, though, and as he wrote he was constantly aware of the fact that Harry had his back to him, that there were so many feet between them - all of them deliberately there. And despite the fact that Arrom was usually the one who crossed over that distance, when ever it appeared, he couldn't bring himself to do it this time, not with Harry being so stiff.

When the young man went about fetching food and preparing a salad, he didn't invite Arrom, didn't offer him anything to eat.

In the following days that distance stayed and though Arrom kept close eye on his young companion, he couldn't figure out what was making him so uneasy. The last time there had been this much space between them had been in the beginning, when he had only joined the island and they were still figuring out their boundaries with each other. This coming from nowhere, and after all they had already learned from each other? Somehow Arrom had thought he had it figured out already - had Harry figured out. Harry was a simple man with simple needs - but apparently he still had very confusing emotions, and Arrom found to his anxiety that despite the weeks they had spend together, the younger man seemed to only get more confusing.

Something was making the younger man troubled, but Arrom couldn't figure out what it was. His memories? That was where it had started, on the memories of the first glimpses of planets. But that made no sense - Harry travelled the galaxy, he saw new planets all the time. What was there so strange about Arrom's memories of planets that had spooked him out?

Unless that wasn't it at all, and it was something Arrom had said. What had he said? He didn't think he had said anything offensive or rude, or anything like that.

"Do you want me to call you Daniel now?" Harry asked suddenly, two days after they had left the planet of the slaves behind.

Arrom frowned at that, momentarily distracted from his dilemma. "No," he said after a moment. The name Daniel Jackson still seemed strange and foreign to him, and if Harry would've called him that, it would've sounded like he was talking to someone else, not him.

"It might help you remember faster," Harry pointed out.

"Maybe. But I prefer Arrom. It's familiar," he added, looking away.

"Don't you want to remember?" the younger man asked, frowning at him.

"Yes, I do, but…" he shook his head. It would feel like losing himself, becoming someone else, someone he didn't know. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that if he wanted to remember, he would probably have to leave Arrom behind him. He just wasn't ready for that, not just yet. Maybe never.

"Tell me when, then," Harry shrugged, and walked away, leaving Arrom feeling oddly cold, staring after him.

Was that what was making Harry ill at ease, that he wasn't remembering faster? But… his home planet wasn't magical, aside from whatever had given him magic, there was nothing _that_ important to remember, was there? Rubbing his neck uncomfortably, Arrom turned away and to the list of the things he remembered, wondering if he should try and be more serious about it all.

He gave the name _Daniel Jackson _an uneasy look on the sheet where it was written over and over again, and instead turned to the other pieces of paper. He had written some of them in Goa'uld, in English, but they were already more or less clear to him. The most interesting one to him was the Ancient language, and after a moment of thought, he reached for those sheets of paper, and concentrated onto them.

He had written them himself, back when he hadn't understood a word or a letter of the language. Now that he could read them, they still didn't make much sense to him. They were mostly things that sounded like sayings. _The river tells no lies, and yet a dishonest man standing at its shore still hears them_ and _Throwing a rock across a pond and expecting to see ripples, you are blind to the true effect,_ and so forth.

There was one he thought for a long while, though, one that he couldn't get out of his mind for hours. _City left behind is hidden beneath waves where the stars were new and evil often slumbers._ He had no idea why, but among all the other sayings - most of which sounded like something Shamda would like - this seemed the most important one. Not that it made it any more understandable than the rest.

Sighing he left the writings behind and instead went to get something to eat. His brain needed a break.

"How long will it take before we reach the next planet?" he asked, glancing at Harry who was sitting at a small distance of the Willow's base.

"Two weeks or so," Harry answered without looking up. "Maybe more - the Willow has used up most of the nutrients in the island's soil, so it might be slower."

"I see," Arrom murmured before turning his attention to the tree and the pears hanging just above them. They looked just as plum as usually, but he wasn't as turned in with the Willow's more delicate needs, so if Harry said it had ran out of nutrients, then Arrom believed him. Shaking his head, he climbed up the trunk, reaching for the fruits.

"Do you think there will be a chappa-ai in the next world?" Harry asked suddenly.

"I don't know. There seems to be lot of them, though," Arrom answered.

"I've never actually gone through a chappa-ai. I've seen people do it, I even know the address of Earth, but I never…" the younger man trailed away, narrowing his eyes in thought. "What does it feel like?"

Arrom didn't know why, but the way Harry said the words felt like an insult. "I don't know," he said, snatching few of the pears and dropping down from the Willow.

"But you remember, don't you? You remember all those worlds you've seen."

The elder man frowned. "Then it doesn't feel like anything because I can't remember feeling anything," he answered, turning away, biting into the fruit and stopping the conversation there.

The stiffness between them seemed to become not just constant but down right permanent after that. Every time Arrom's memories or past came up, everything seemed to only get worse - and they came up often. Arrom couldn't stop himself from re-reading his notes and writing some new theories - and every time he did, he could feel Harry there _not watching_ but very present. And it got only worse if they talked because somehow, all they talked about was his past.

It seemed like Harry was suddenly only interested in what his life had been like before. "Do you think you had your own house?" he would ask and, "What do you think your life was like?" and, "Do you think you have family?" which he asked often despite the fact that Arrom's answer never changed. He didn't know - and soon he would probably stop _caring_ too, just because Harry seemed so interested. He didn't think he was a spiteful man, but the more interested Harry got of Daniel Jackson, the more Arrom disliked the name.

There was more to his past than just _Daniel Jackson_. There were other things. There were the things he had known, not just what he had been. Places he had seen. Abilities he had had. There were the languages - and really, the languages were much more interesting that whether or not Daniel Jackson had had a house or not. There was for one how he had lost his memories or how he had gained magic - had Harry completely forgotten that?

And still…

"Have you remembered anything new?" Harry asked yet again, noticing him with the sheet of sayings he had written when he hadn't yet understood.

"Not really. It starting to sound like I was a follower of some very obscure teachings, though," Arrom sighed, trying to smother his irritation while poking the paper with his fingertip. "_In reaching for the stars, you will miss the fruit in low tree branch_," he read from the paper, lifting it slightly. "Apparently I'm supposed to know what that means."

"I think it's fairly obvious," Harry mused, glancing up to the Willow - and to the low branches that bore the fruits.

Arrom shook his head, leaning his chin to his palm. "I don't know if it's meant to be taken literally," he answered.

"Hm. Then I guess the opposite is true too. In reaching for the fruits on the low tree branches, you will miss the stars above," Harry answered, shrugging his shoulders and standing up. "Maybe that's more true than the opposite."

Arrom frowned, watching him as he walked back to the Willow. "I don't see how trying to figure out what I wrote myself is unimportant. Sure, it's not the same thing as seeing hundreds of worlds through the chappa-ai, but it matters to me," he said, as he figured out what the other was saying - or trying to, anyway. "I'm not losing anything by concentrating onto something smaller for a change."

"You might. You don't _know_," Harry answered, kneeling by the Willow and reaching his hand out to touch the bark.

Suddenly Arrom felt more than just slightly annoyed by the other's behaviour - he felt angry. Standing up, glared at the younger man. "You said yourself that I'm not exactly losing my memories, I haven't lost any of them - they're just locked. And we both know I'm not just going to remember it all suddenly - I haven't so far and I've been thinking these things through over and over a hundred times now! Is it so bad that I want a break?" he asked.

Harry shrugged, facing away from him. "I guess it's your choice," he said quietly. "I'm just not sure if you're doing yourself any favours by giving up.

Arrom scowled. Doing _them_ any favours, he meant. "I'm sure Daniel Jackson knows more than I do - it's _obvious_ he does, he could properly point you right to a magical planet no problem - but what else can I do? I've been through this stuff a thousand times now!" he said, wiping his hand wildly across the table and sending the papers scattering across the mossy surface of the island. "I know I'm not any help right now - I know you're probably sick of me, when I can't contribute -"

Harry sighed heavily, bowing his head. Arrom echoed the gesture, but with more force, leaving the table's side before he would in his anger flip it over. Instead, he stalked over to the younger man. "Do you want me not to be here?" he asked, irritation making his voice harsher than it had ever been before. "Because it's starting to sound like you do, like you want me out of here, want me to go away so that you can have Daniel Jackson. Except, he's not coming up that fast and I'm not sure if I even want him to - if I'll ever want him to! So, if you want me to leave, then I'll leave, the next planet with a chappa-ai, _I'll leave_."

Under his words, Harry's shoulders slumped slightly and he leaned forward, resting his forehead against the bark. He didn't answer, and letting out a harsh breath, Arrom reached out, intending to shake him, pull him away from the tree and force him to answer. Because this, _this_ was important and he _needed_ to know right now, if he was still welcome on the island.

Instead of managing to turn the other over, he found himself falling right into Harry, into his mind - catching them both by surprise by how easily it all seemed to collapse together.

First he felt Harry's outrage and confusion at the swift intrusion - then his desperate attempt to push Arrom away and out of his mind. More out of instinct to use force against force than actual conscious decision, Arrom fought back and held his ground - and then felt it. The unease and the guilt and the shame - and more doubt than he had thought a person was able to feel. He felt Harry growing still, both in body and in mind, as he reached out and explored the sensation, realising with shock that Harry felt it _every second of every day_.

The fear that soon Arrom would regain his memories - and leave. And even more that, the growing fear that Harry might be the one holding him back, keeping him from regaining his old life. Because inside, even while pulling away and nudging Arrom to go forward, Harry was fighting it tooth and nail - desperately wanting Arrom to just stay _there_ and stay _himself_ and _never change_, all the while hating himself for it

_'Harry -'_ he started, bewildered by what he was feeling - and then frustrated because _why hadn't Harry just said it_? Why the whole stupid charade when he was so obviously against - why try and make Arrom believe… _'What, why did you…?'_ he started, drawing what felt like mental breath, preparing to squash the whole stupid thing, what ever it was, right there and then.

_'Don't. Don't. You can't know, you can't…'_ Harry answered back, shivering and wiggling like trying to draw away from Arrom's hold even while they were barely touching.

_'Harry, you - I don't_ want _to leave - you must know that!'_ Arrom nearly yelled at him. _'I don't even want to remember, not if it would -'_

_'You can't say that. Of course you want to remember - Daniel Jackson is who you were. If I lost my memories, I would want to know,' _the younger man nearly moaned back, trying to turn away, to flee._ 'You will remember, and find out that you have a home and friends and maybe a family and you will go - and I have no right trying to keep you -'_

_'Don't be an _idiot. _I'm not going,'_ Arrom snapped back, now moving forward and drawing the other closer, to forcibly make him feel the conviction of his words. _'No don't turn away, look at me! I'm not going to go anywhere. I told you. Why would I want to return to a world that doesn't have magic? Would you? Earth is your home too, even if not the same Earth you were born in - would you return there, just because it's supposedly where you belong?'_ he asked, and held on tighter as Harry tried to fight back. _'Harry… I don't want to_ lose _this. Magic, the __Willow__, you. This feeling. None of it. I don't -'_ he stopped, and instead of words, used emotions.

What it felt like to touch the Willow - or to sense Harry across the island, and where ever he was. To learn magic, to feel the power, to use it, to know that it was his own accomplishment, his own strength. To live in the island, to _fit in_ there, to be part of the connection that Harry and the Willow formed, to be part of that incredible, indescribable circle of energy and magic and emotion and existence. To just _belong_.

He felt Harry shuddering, both in body and in mind, before the door from the other side opened - and he felt what Harry felt. To have him here, with him, living on the island - to be able to talk and have someone answer in words, rather than emotions. To be understood and accepted. To know that Arrom was there, and alive, a human, a magician, _like him_. Four years of loneliness laid somewhere behind all these emotions, slowly becoming _worth it_ because it wasn't like that anymore, because Harry wasn't alone anymore.

The desperate need to have Arrom there - the gut wrenching fear that he would go away. That Harry would one day find himself alone with the Willow again - alone in universe that wasn't theirs.

Arrom held on tighter, wrapping his arms and thoughts and magic around the other, feeling like they'd fall apart if he didn't - like they'd both be shattered by the emotions if he didn't just hold on and ride it out. _'I'm here, I'm here, I'm here,'_ he said, chanting it like it was the most important spell he had ever tried. _'I'm not going anywhere.'_

And slowly, sacredly, Harry reached for him and finally, after weeks together, allowed himself to believe it.

x

It wasn't quite the end of it, but it was the beginning of the end and Arrom knew it. He caught Harry looking at him often, standing indecisively at a distance, like not sure of his welcome in his _own home_. And even when Arrom held out his hand or patted the seat beside him, often going as far as fetching Harry bodily and drawing him into the space right next to him, he could still feel the awkwardness and the guilt - more so the closer they came to their next destination. But in the same time, he could see it become a little easier - the space between them was smaller now. Harry no longer tried to dig his heels when Arrom took his hand, not because of some self-righteous attempt of trying to do right by him.

The whole thing was so raw for them, though, that they had no idea how to proceed from there, aside from the awkward distance and making equally awkward attempts to make it smaller. Arrom found himself wondering more and more often if it was alright to put his arm around the other - because it felt like it would make it easier to hold him there and stop him from retreating to that cluster of anxiety he held inside him. Harry, on other hand, never tried to reach for him at all, but when ever Arrom did he at least didn't try to withdraw, staying still and _there_ even when Arrom leaned closer so that their shoulders and thighs touched, connecting them together.

Daniel Jackson with his memories and knowledge became a bit of a taboo between them, and instead they concentrated onto Arrom's magic, experimenting more and more now that they understood the boundaries better. They learned also about the odd alignments that Arrom now understood a little better. His levitation became permanently _telekinesis_, and they soon figured out that all levitation, summoning and banishment charms were possible through telekinesis - without wand, without a spell, and with incredible variety for as long as Arrom just practiced enough. Unlike spells, telekinesis didn't know the difference between a dead leaf or barrel heavy with dried fruits - though Arrom certainly did, afterwards.

The precision was what Arrom found himself most curious about. Harry turned out to be source of endless ideas as far as testing went, and he had many suggestions as to what try. Levitating multiple leaves in or out of synch, trying to pitch a tent without using his hands, floating water from one container to another, and so forth. One Arrom found he liked the best was trying to write without holding the charcoal in his hand and instead using telekinesis to move it across the paper. The result was at first very messy, but it was harder than levitating water, and yet more familiar, so it came out a bit easier - and didn't get either one of them sopping wet, which was always a good thing. Harry tried it too, with much better result thanks to the fact that if he held his wand like writing tool, the thing he tried to levitate moved in parallel.

A fit of frustration about the charcoal not moving quite like he wished taught Arrom a new ability - as under his glare, the charcoal caught flame, nearly setting the paper and the table fire too. After a moment of panic and Harry ruining several good sheets of paper by dousing them with water, they explored Arrom's new talent - mostly by the wooden tub which, being full of water, was the safest place to try.

"There are lot of fire spells. My friend could create these blue flames we used to put into jar for warmth. I know a few too, mostly they're battle spells though, so it's probably better not to try them here," Harry said, and then told him of the spell _fiendfyre_ which could burn everything in it's wake, even metal - and which took the shape of flaming animals when it was cast. "It's a dark art, though, so I don't know it."

They couldn't decide how to parallel Arrom's _pyrokinesis_ with any flame spells, because it acted both like all of them, and not like any of them. When he concentrated, he could make a thing catch flames - but with harder concentration, he could make fire out of nothing without needing anything to actually burn. Harry soon figured out that the reason why Arrom had learned to rise temperature of water and now air too was because of _pyrokinesis_ - they worked pretty much the same. Following that realisation, Arrom soon learned he could control the heat and the size of the flame. Knowing he could was dozens of attempts and trials away from actually doing it, though.

Eventually the Willow informed them with no uncertain terms that it was time they stopped playing with fire - that while it did not mind the higher concentration of water in the air thanks to their many water-fire experiments, they were using the island's oxygen up faster than the tree could produce it.

"Okay, that's a new problem," Harry mused, and sharing a sheepish smile, they returned to working with telekinesis. Arrom couldn't help but think later that the moment of shared enthusiasm and embarrassment was a battle won in the fight against - or maybe for - the thing between them.

Just a day or so after that event, after which they had moved back to levitation and telekinesis, that they arrived at their next destination. Arrom held his breath as they dropped from hyperspace, waiting for the verdict and relaxing as Harry informed him that the Willow couldn't detect any technology on the planet - or any significant concentrations of life, either.

"It's uninhabited," he said, joining Arrom at the island's edge, staring down to the green-blue planet above them. "But habitable."

"So, we'll land?" Arrom asked, trying not to sound too hopeful or too excited - and by the looks of Harry's expression, failing in both counts.

"Yeah," the younger man agreed. "And we'll stay for few days, so that the Willow can replenish water and draw some new soil," he said and then looked at the planet again. "The Willow can't sense any chappa-ai on the planet," he added quietly.

"Good," Arrom just said, and revelled in the wary smile Harry gave him as an answer

Soon after, they begun their descent through the cloud coverage and down to the planet below, while Arrom tried not to feel so giddy about the chance to feel actual ground below his feet - and failed badly. Harry, despite all his worries and anxieties, seemed to share the feeling, though, so maybe it wasn't so bad.

They landed on a crook of a river, and for a moment Arrom was confused as to why - there were plenty of lakes around for the island to land on, where they would fit much better. On the river, they barely fit at all, and the water didn't reach that high. But, as Harry urged him to climb down from the island, he saw why that particular place. The soil around and below the river was firm and fertile - and as they watched, the Willow wove it's roots eagerly to it, digging up enormous chunks of earth and drawing them closer, all the while ridding the island of the older soil.

"The top soil will be kept the same," Harry said as they watched the Willow dug into the earth with it's roots like some sort of tentacle beast. "It has organisms and such the Willow wants to keep, but the bottom soil is replaced every now and then."

"How often does this happen?" Arrom asked, fascinated by the sight.

"Once or twice a year, depending on the soil," Harry answered and looked around them in the forest they had found themselves in. "Do you want to… stretch your legs?" he asked after moment.

"_Yes,_" Arrom answered vehemently, and grinning like little boys they left the Willow to it's business, and headed to explore the new world.

It turned out that the world had nothing really interesting in it - only forest, forests and some more forest. The chance to walk around, to run and - once the Willow was finished replenishing it's soil and went to seek out a lake to land on - to swim, was more than welcome though. On the lake, Harry proved out to not be a complete vegetarian. Once they were settled in and washed the dust of their travels off, he pulled out a rod and that night they ate fish, rather than fruit.

"There's nothing wrong with fruits, heavens no, but I think I've never had better fish in my life," Arrom said afterwards, once they were full and satisfied and too lazy to do anything but stare up to the stars of the empty world.

"I know what you mean," Harry agreed, yawning contently.

"How long are we going to stay here?" Arrom asked after long, fairly comfortable silence.

"I don't know. Sometimes we stay days, sometimes weeks - depending on weather," Harry admitted. "We're not on actual schedule, after all."

Arrom nodded and then frowned. "The weather here is pretty nice, isn't it?" he asked. It really was - much, much warmer than it had been in the planet of the Azul. The water had been warm too. Unbelievably warm.

"Yes. Yes it is," Harry agreed with a smile and yawned.

Neither bothered to seek their beds that night - sleeping under the warm, starry sky with the Willow keeping the vigil was too nice to pass.

The several days they ended up spending in the planet turned out to be even more enjoyable than Arrom had assumed. They walked, they explored - and the swam every day, before indulging themselves some more fish. They climbed trees and hills and they stayed awake thorough the nights, just so that they could watch the incredible colour show that was the milky way galaxy. They found to their amazement that the planet had four moons, each of them either very big or very close, and watching how they drifted past each other on the night sky was surprisingly enjoyable past time.

In the days that followed Arrom saw what kind of boy Harry had once been, as the younger man let himself go with the excitement of new world. He was curious and went to check out every new thing without stopping to think it twice - nearly giving Arrom a heart attack when one of those things was a bush of flowers on a harsh cliff side. Arrom was reminded of how Harry had been on the planet of the ruins when they had been just making their way to the Willow - easily distracted by worthless winter flowers. He had to wonder how he had forgotten that child like curiosity - but then, on the island, there was nothing new for Harry to explore.

Except Arrom himself, and Harry was still too afraid of him leaving to get too close.

Deciding to forget the dilemma of memories and past selves and all other things that made life seem so hard at times for a while, Arrom let himself loose as well and followed Harry's lead, allowing small things sweep him away. Mostly those things were rocks in the lake and river banks, worn smooth by the water and glittering in the sunlight. The one that interested him the most had an odd formation in it, like a impression of a creature. Fossil, Harry called it, saying that the creature had probably died on the rock, before the rock had been a rock. It made strange amount of sense to Arrom, who spent countless of minutes examining the fossil, fascinated by the strange creature that had left it's mark on it.

"If you were an archaeologist - and studied ancient civilisations and such - then this would be right up your alley," Harry noted, as Arrom turned the fossil in his hand, trying to figure out which way the creature was right way around. It was the first time in days he had mentioned anything about Arrom's past, and as the elder man glanced up in surprise, he flushed bright red. "I mean… that's what archaeologists do, they study fossils and stuff."

"Maybe," Arrom agreed, and for a while he wondered if he should chuck the stone across the lake and let it be forgotten. But it was too _fascinating_ to waste it like that. He eventually took the fossil to his tent, hiding it in a box beneath his table for later examination, in time when it wouldn't rouse so many doubts. He went back to inspecting more harmless rocks instead, finding one especially pretty one that was bright red and golden not too far from where the island was - which Harry seemed to greatly approve, saying that it was very _gryffindorish_.

The younger man did his occasional collecting too - only, he was more plant oriented. It was probably the effect of several years with the Willow as his only companion, but Harry seemed to have incredible respect towards all things green - along with great deal of curiosity. Arrom hadn't really paid any attention to the fact that the Willow wasn't strictly speaking the only plant-based life form on the island - there was grass and moss and some odd clusters of mushrooms. It was only after he saw Harry negotiating with the Willow and then digging a small hole into the edge of the island so that he could plant some odd looking herbs there, that Arrom realised that Harry had probably been the one to plant them all.

What he planted on the island was nothing in comparison to all of the planting _from_ the Willow he did, though. Arrom wasn't sure how he had missed it, but Harry collected seeds from the great tree - from all the fruits and from the Willow itself. On the planet Harry brought those seeds out again, satchels full of them, and then he sowed them all around them in the lake side - apples, oranges, cherries, everything, even the nuts. He spent especial attention while sowing the small white seeds that came from the Willow itself.

"The other seeds might grow - I don't think the Willow's seeds will. But it doesn't hurt to try," he said afterwards, after Arrom had watched for a while and realised that it was not as much something he had just decided to do - it was a habit, a ritual. Harry probably did it in every planet he landed on - he had probably done it in the planet of the ruins, even aside from giving the seeds to Shamda.

"Maybe one day," Arrom said comfortingly.

"Yeah, maybe," Harry agreed sadly, and together they returned to the island.

It strange how such a small event could turn a warm day so cold, but it did. Arrom couldn't stop thinking about those white seeds for hours afterwards, or the sorrowful knowledge that they wouldn't grow here - and that they hadn't in any other planet Harry had planted them in. Arrom was always distantly aware that the Willow was one of it's kind, and that he and Harry, while not exactly the same, were also more or less alone in the universe. With Harry and Willow there all the time it was easy to forget just how alone they really were. It was a big galaxy out there, after all, and yet…

As he sought a spot beside Harry, leaning against the Willow, he wondered if it would ever change - and how it would feel, if they would find some other people like them. How it would be, an entire planet that felt like the island did - brimming with power and magic and life in such pure form that it could be felt in the very air. Would the Willow settle down, grow actually roots - become part of the earth rather than sky? Would Harry move into actual house, live more on ground than in the air? Would Arrom? Right now he couldn't imagine it any more than he could image leaving the Willow, or Harry.

"What will you do, if you will find a magical planet?" he asked quietly, glancing at Harry who seemed to be in grips of the same melancholy mood that had struck him.

The younger man frowned, turning to look at him. It was a long, considering look that Arrom couldn't look away from, even when it strayed down from his eyes and across his face. "I don't know," Harry said after a moment, and looked away. "I'm not sure if I ever did. I just want to find one. Now though… It's not so bad now, with you here."

Arrom eyed him for a moment, before reaching out and taking Harry's hand into his, weaving their fingers together. For a long moment they stared at the lake and the shoreline in the distance, past the island's edge, sad and content at the same time. When the Willow, echoing the same melancholy as they did, drew them in and held them tight, they both fell to the embrace happily, letting the simple togetherness surround them. With Harry right in front of him and the Willow all around him, Arrom let the feeling of safety and belonging whisk him away, letting his own emotions run loose - wanting the others know how glad he was to know them, to feel them. How much they meant to him.

Beside him, Harry jerked with surprise - but before he could withdraw, the sharing became two sided.

And Arrom could see, distantly and vaguely, how Harry had been watching him and trying not to. How the young man had been noticing things about him he usually didn't try to notice with people - because he always had to move on, and leave those planets where people welcomed him and told him stories, listened into his, behind. But Harry hadn't been able to look away because Arrom was so _present_, so _alive_ - so real - when Harry himself felt like a ghost so many times.

Harry knew his emotions were always close to the surface but Arrom wasn't like that - he thought too much to always reveal what he was thinking, exactly. But nowadays, Arrom was doing it more and more - he was smiling, his eyes widened with amazement and curiosity and interest behind the glasses that Harry had created for him. Maybe it was because of the glasses - the elder man didn't need to squint and frown to see things a little bit clearer - but Harry wasn't sure. All he knew was that Arrom smiled a _lot _now, and every time he did the younger man felt a jolt in his stomach.

And Harry had noticed his hands, strong and secure, slightly bigger than his own, working on whatever Arrom was trying to figure out at the time. How they wrote, how they carried things, how Arrom would absently smooth his knuckles over his mouth when he was deep in thought, how he would clasp them together when talking, or wave them around. And worse yet, how Arrom reached out and took Harry's hand into his - it had happened more often lately, and Harry had been helpless against it because each time it was harder and harder to make himself distant towards it. Because it was _strong_ and _warm_ and _certain_ and worse than that, it was _kind_.

But Harry had noticed more - desperately trying not to, but unable to help himself. Arrom was taller than him, physically stronger - and it showed when he moved, when he walked, when he did anything, and Harry could only watch and admire. The strong line of his neck and the security of his footsteps even when the ground was unstable, and how he rolled his sleeves back before climbing the Willow's trunk, revealing hard, strong forearms.

After the first time of accidentally getting caught by the sight of Arrom undressing in order to wash himself in the tub - watching his smooth skin and his strong physique and just _staring_ at everything because he couldn't look away, couldn't turn his back to the beauty before him - Harry had tried to hide himself in his tent every time Arrom had made his way to the tub. It hadn't always helped - and there was a rip in Harry's sleeping tent, that gave his sad dreams too much material to work on - but he had tried not to look.

He didn't want to creep the elder man out. Arrom said he didn't want to leave - but that was now, and Harry knew so well how opinions chanced, how easily the situation could turn on it's head.

But then Arrom had somehow gotten through and close and into his mind, and Harry had admitted some, but not all - and suddenly, Arrom was _always there_. Pressed against his shoulder and next to him, and so warm and strong and _distracting_. It was easier on the planet, at first - walking around, exploring, it distracted Harry enough not to get distracted by Arrom. And then… and then they had swam, and it had gotten worse again - because Arrom apparently didn't know the concept of swim-wear, and really, Harry had none for either of them.

But he tried, he tried and he tried, because Arrom was there now, and Merlin, Harry didn't want to lose him - didn't want to drive him away. He didn't think he could bear it.

When he pulled back from Harry, Arrom found himself back in his body and the younger man just inches away, looking him over the frames of his glasses, wide eyed and _terrified_, and too frozen to even back away. Speechless, Arrom lifted his hand from the Willow's root and to Harry's cheek, his fingers leaving dirt stains on the other's pale skin. Harry's chin was just tiniest bit rough with stubble, but his cheek was soft and warm.

"Arrom?" the young wizard whispered cautiously, shaking with anxiety and anticipation - and Arrom just had to kiss him after that. Harry made a sound of objection and Arrom could feel his _no, he doesn't want this, he's just trying to…_ But Arrom didn't, he really didn't. Pulling Harry in by his neck and keeping him close, he showed him.

He showed how he saw Harry, and what it was like to have a place to just _be_ after a moon of being guest in society that tried to make him fit, but couldn't. He showed the strange, beautiful moments that had became his life, for which he would never stop being amazed or grateful. He showed what it felt like to be welcomed into that small sphere of belonging that Harry and Willow created - how grateful he was for that.

And then he showed how he saw Harry. How he had been struck speechless by the easy kind things Harry did without even noticing - how the creation of the replica-glasses had came out of nowhere, how much it had meant to him to _see_ suddenly, and how Harry hadn't even noticed, too happy and drunk and just generally kind to even realise the worth of that gesture. Not to mention about the other small things Harry did, so often and so easily, that meant so much for Arrom. Small smiles and looks of disbelieved delight and general shy enjoyment that the other tried to deny, but which Arrom saw and felt - which made him feel _wanted_.

Before Harry, no one had wanted _him_, the way he was, not like this. Zira had wanted him for his body to do who knew what with him. Shamda had been interested him because he was a plank slate somehow full of stories, and Shamda was and had always been a storyteller. Khordib and Fasira, so kind and friendly, had tried to do the right thing - but they too had been eagerly waiting to meet the man he _had been_. And yet Harry did all he thought he could to keep him - all the while wanting Arrom to be happy, wanting to do right by him to the point of denying himself and causing himself pain.

Arrom knew now that Harry mourned each memory he regained, hated them even. He knew Harry knew that one of those memories could change everything and that the concept terrified him - and that meant more to the elder man that he could say. They both knew that it might, that when Arrom would remember the person he was before, everything could change - and which made Harry's dislike towards his memories even more important. Because Harry wanted _Arrom_, not who he had been before.

And yet, regardless, Harry had gone his way to do everything to appease Arrom, when his memories had roused and he had remembered Bra'tac and Rya'c. Even knowing that it would probably be a leap forward with the memories, even knowing that Arrom would probably learn more, he hadn't let his own, personal fears get any say. Instead he had planned a rescue. Of course, Harry's own sense of honour would've never let him just walk away - but Arrom knew that, in a way, he still could've. But he hadn't - for Arrom, he hadn't.

When Harry had collapsed against his back and fallen asleep in his arms - Arrom had known he could never leave the younger man voluntarily. It had been so easy to decline Bra'tac's offers of his former life and former home - sweet even - because Arrom had finally known where he belonged, where his home was.

With the Willow, atop the great tree's roots, beneath it's branches.

And beside Harry.

Now that was more true than ever, because he now knew the lengths Harry would go. To deny himself, his own desires and fears, just because of something he thought Arrom wanted was, while stupid, not something Arrom could or would forget. Harry was awkward and bit of an idiot when it came to emotions - but he only had good intentions and he lived up to those intentions at his own risk.

How could Arrom not love him for that? For _all_ of if?

Carefully, lightly - barely there at all- the kiss lingered just at the edges of Harry's lips, waiting patiently, until the younger man let out a shivering sigh and shifted closer, making the contact stronger, making it real.

Though Arrom had never imagined kissing Harry before, now that he had he couldn't imagine stopping. It was clumsy, he knew that somehow distantly, a little awkward. He couldn't remember how to kiss, couldn't remember if he ever had, and that reflected on it somewhat badly. But it was soft and warm and _there_, living and real and welcoming, even more so as Harry lifted his hand to Arrom's chest, then up to his shoulder and finally around his neck, pulling him closer like fearing he'd back away if he didn't. As if Arrom could have.

As the kiss lingered it grew more certain - from the shivering and cautious start into exploratory nibbling, mostly from Harry's part. He was an world traveller, after all, and as Arrom tried not get lost in the feeling, Harry let his curiosity take him. Nibbles turned into curious licks, into opening of lips and cautious tastes, until Arrom found his mouth open and his thoughts fading completely away, because Harry was there, warm, slim, and suddenly his mouth was wet and he felt _starved_.

He was barely aware of wrapping his arms around Harry, as the two of them slid down and to the spot where Harry usually sat, the comfortable space just between the Willow's largest roots, where there was just barely enough space for them both. It didn't matter, though, neither did the fact that Arrom was getting dirt into his hair or that there was a root pressing against his back, because it was so _comfortable_ to be there, in that crowded space with Harry against him and the Willow all around him.

When they broke apart after what felt like eternity of kissing, Arrom's lips were tingling and his body was humming with energy - and Harry was more on top of him, than beside him.

"Hmm?" the younger man asked, while Arrom licking his lips, trying to gather his thoughts. It took him a moment to manage it to the point where he realised Harry wasn't quite coherent either.

"Yeah?" he asked, quiet and soft, fearing that any loud noise would break the odd, sweet spell over them.

"This okay?" Harry asked, leaning to his elbow and looking down on him. His eyes were wide and bright, hopeful and disbelieving all at the same time. His glasses were askew and after a moment Arrom realised that his were probably too.

"Yes," he said, looking up to the other with wonder before reaching up and taking he younger man's glasses off, placing them on the root beside them. "Just… I can't remember," he murmured, a little embarrassed. "Ever doing anything like this. I must've - I'm not… I'm not that young. But I can't… I don't remember _how_."

Harry smiled, awkward and a little hesitant. "I do," he said, for a moment just looking at the glasses on the root. Then he turned his eyes back to Arrom, oddly shy considering he was laying nearly on top of the elder man. "I'm just… Are you sure? What if… what if you have a family? A… a wife? You could."

"I don't think so," Arrom answered, absolutely certain of it. Harry, though, didn't look all that convinced, so Arrom smiled, trying to reassure. "I would know if I did. I would feel it," he insisted, lifting his hand and stroking his thumb across Harry's cheek. Seeing the flicker of anxiety in the other's green eyes, he knew what Harry was so worried about. "I'm not going to regret this. I'm not going to regret _anything_ I do with you."

Harry ducked his head, closing his eyes for a moment and just leaning into Arrom's palm, looking conflicted. When he opened them again, the desire in them was so blatant that Arrom shuddered, tightening his left arm's hold around the other's waist. "Come on, Harry," he whispered, suddenly breathless, and with a hiss Harry snatched the replica-glasses from Arrom's face and shifted forward.

The kiss that followed was neither tentative or cautious. As Harry moved over him, pinning him to the ground between the Willow's roots, Arrom felt instantly drunk with the strength of the other's desire, helpless against it. Harry kissed him with a hunger he had never expressed before, taking Arrom's lips with his own like he had never eaten anything. Arrom moaned with surprised need against the hunger, clenching the fabric in the back of Harry's robes under his fingers, as the other pressed him down eagerly, moving against him.

When Harry's knee lodged between his legs and he pushed down and against Arrom's hip, the jolt of heat the elder man felt nearly made him jump - though, judging by the sound of Harry's groan, it might've been a good thing if he had. The younger man pulled back with a gasp, leaning his elbow just beside Arrom's head and pushing his hips down again. Arrom gasped softly, closing his eyes at the sensation - pressure, strength, _friction_ - and almost without his conscious volition, his hips pushed upwards and against the other's hardness.

For a moment they stared at each other, wide eyed and out of breath - scared and exhilarated. Then, in silent unison, they moved until Harry was between Arrom's bent knees, aligned just right. Arrom threw his head back, gasping as the other's weight settled down on him just _so_, his right foot lifting by itself to hug Harry's hips closer. "Come on, _come on_," Arrom murmured, now knowing what he wanted and wanting it _now_. He almost felt like saying a prayer when, with a shudder, Harry moved forward and pushed down hard.

Maybe it was a testament of Arrom's newfound inexperience, or of how long Harry had been alone, but in the end they didn't manage to even get their robes off, not to mention about the rest of their clothes. It was over before they had even gotten used to the idea that it was happening, and then they found themselves breathless and sweaty and sticky, still fully clothed and now somewhat uncomfortable in the crook of the Willow's roots.

"Don't," Arrom said before Harry, now stiff and awkward and looking just too guilty for his liking, tried to pull away. Quickly the elder man tightened his hold, pulling the younger man to his chest, holding tight. "_Don't,"_ Arrom said again, when Harry tried to wiggle free from is hold, making Arrom wrap his legs around him too. The younger man tried for a moment longer, before giving up with a heavy sigh, and slumping down into his embrace, his face buried in elder man's neck.

"I'm sticky," was Harry's eloquent and slightly muffled verdict, making Arrom laugh and just hold him closer - while above them the Willow rustled and quietly begun to bloom.

For a moment Arrom was afraid that it would get awkward now, everything between them. Harry was an awkward person, Arrom knew, more so than anyone else he had met as far as he could remember - and the connection between them, now deeper than ever, could've easily made the younger man back into his shell again and begin that stiff withdrawing once more.

Arrom was seriously starting to be amused by how it could be that between the two of them he, a man with amnesia, was the one better in touch with his emotions rather than the _telepath_ with _empathic_ bond with a magical tree, not to mention life time worth of memories. But that didn't mean that it wasn't a serious problem.

However to his surprise it didn't happen. Though Harry was a little bit stiff when they finally untangled themselves and made their way to the island's edge to wash themselves from the stickiness of their moment of passion, the younger man didn't try to withdraw - neither did he try to look away, for the first time. He kept a little distance between them and didn't touch, but aside from that he was very much present. Arrom found himself being the one awkward suddenly, as Harry stared at him with such obvious longing that it was hard to believe that he could've _missed_ it before.

With the Azul he had never considered himself good looking, not really. The Azul were dark and exotic with dark eyes and hair, while Arrom was pale and blue eyed and strange - a bit too big around the shoulders, a bit too strange. It hadn't helped that in the beginning everyone had been staring him like he was something out of their world - which, when he thought about it, he obviously was. In the end, though, it had been easier not to think about it - and though he knew that his looks was probably why Zira had tried to seduce him away, he hadn't really _considered it_.

But now, watching how Harry's hands shook a little as he took of his robes, he did. And he rather liked it.

"Come here," he said, holding out his hands which had given Harry so much trouble without him knowing, and with a helpless look Harry stumbled forward. Arrom grinned, leaning closer and kissing the younger man gently, before going about undressing him, a task that seemed a little beyond Harry's capabilities at the moment. Harry let him, just staring at him like he had never seen him before.

"So. Do you prefer men entirely over women?" Arrom asked, feeling a spark of amusement as he watched the other turn red with embarrassment.

"N-not really. I… I just like people, male and female," Harry answered embarrassedly, looking away - or trying to anyway. The elder man tried not to grin too widely, seeing that the younger man was still looking at him, his hands, from the corner of his eyes. "You, ah… obviously you don't mind, but -"

"I knew. I never really thought about it before, but I always saw beauty in both genders," Arrom admitted. "With the Azul there wasn't much of an opportunity to explore, however. The Azul marry at fairly young age and only ones unmarried were those who had lost their partners at one point or another - and they tended to be uninterested. Not to mention the fact that I was foreign to them - and maybe not that pleasing to their eyes."

"You're pleasing to mine," Harry said and then frowned, looking away.

Arrom smiled, pushing the other's robe over his shoulders and then down to the ground of the island. "I know," he said, and tugged Harry's shirt up and off him, as the younger man lifted his arms to let him. "You're not that bad looking yourself," he added quietly, running his hand down across Harry's shoulders and chest. The other wasn't big by all means and he couldn't be called strong, but he was very firm - there was a wiry sort of strength in him that had nothing to do with the size of his muscles but rather how they had been used along the years.

Harry remained embarrassedly silent as Arrom undressed the rest of him, noting that, yes, Harry was indeed sticky and no doubt uncomfortable - but apparently it hadn't stopped him from being roused by Arrom's touches. "You're so young," Arrom noted with some measure of amusement and saved him from further embarrassment by leading him into the water.

"Is that a bad thing?" Harry asked, once they were a bit cleaner and thoroughly wet, kicking in the water and enjoying its temperature - even in night time, it remained warm.

"Youth? No, of course not," Arrom mused reaching forward and down and forcing Harry to take support from the island's edge by tracking his fingers down. It was so easy just to reach and _touch_, that he almost laughed with delight, not sure how he had managed to avoid it before. Why had it seemed so difficult before? "I fear I'm going to have some trouble keeping up, though."

"Really? Doesn't really seem like it," Harry answered in choked tones, flushing under his gaze and under the light of the moons. Arrom smiled, stroking his hand up and down, more exploring than caressing but still making Harry's breath hitch and his hips jerked sharply forward. "Arrom, _please_," the younger man hissed, his teeth clenched. Pushing him against the island's edge Arrom went about exploring the rest of new territory he suddenly had a free, unlimited access to.

x

The second thoughts didn't come until later, after Arrom had half carried Harry to his tent where they had settled down to sleep - or Harry had anyway. After two releases the younger man properly exhausted, and had dropped off to sleep soon after Arrom had managed to assure him that he had no intention of sleeping neither by himself nor in Harry's tiny sleep tent - they wouldn't both fit in the thing. Thankfully, Harry's exhaustion had made convincing him easy and he had dropped down to Arrom's bed without a that much complaining. Arrom himself wasn't as tired yet, though he still made himself comfortable next to his younger lover.

But as sleep evaded him, he begun to think, and wonder and eventually worry. He was happy, he was content - and he knew he would only get more so. He hadn't lied to Harry - there was no way in this or any other world that he would _ever_ regret the night. But still he couldn't help but wonder what Daniel Jackson, the explorer, linguistic and archaeologist, would think of it.

Because, as much as he did try to deny it, he didn't know what he would think once his memories would return - and he was positive that they would, sooner or later. Later, most probably, but still. One day he would remember his life, of which he had more than thirty years behind him, and with all those memories would come opinions and thoughts and beliefs - some which circled around some very vague teachings, if the Ancients writings could be trusted. With all that, what would he think of Harry, and of holding him like this? What would those experiences make of it?

Turning to look at the young man who lay beside him, head resting nearly on Arrom's shoulder, the elder man sighed. He didn't want to leave Harry, couldn't even imagine it now. What he could imagine was staying, for months, for years, travelling under the Willow, trying to find something neither of them knew but hoped to discover nonetheless - until Harry would stop being young and he himself would start being old. It was entirely possible that Arrom was a little in love with that thought.

He liked to think that Daniel Jackson would be too, but he didn't know for sure.

Leaning down and resting his forehead against Harry's, Arrom closed his eyes. For now there was little he could do but love the life he had and hope the life he had once led wouldn't eventually ruin it. With that thought, he wrapped one arm around Harry's chest, and joined him in slumber.

The next day, everything seemed new and fresh - and it wasn't just because the island was now covered with the Willow's flowers that had fallen during the night. Arrom was hyperaware of Harry where ever he was, and he knew the other was too. He kept noticing odd things, like the fact that Harry had a small scar on the side of his cheek, and that the faded one on his forehead looked like a symbol - and that when they kissed, Harry's eyes grew dark. Harry seemed overcame by similar discoveries, and Arrom caught him staring at strange things, like the back of Arrom's neck and the scar on his shoulder. They were clumsy around each other, staring a little too long and standing a little too close, hands lingering at each other's backs and sides, helpless against the urge to touch and pull closer.

Arrom was both surprised and delighted to find that now that Harry had stopped trying to control himself, he was very touch-oriented person. Once Arrom had managed to make him believe he could do it any time he wanted, Harry reached out to touch him often, going about his way to plant himself near Arrom just so that he could do it, rather like avoiding him like before. It ended up with them managing to avoid laundry for days because every time Arrom went about gathering their clothes to wash, Harry sneaked up on him from behind, and thoroughly distracted him.

Though it might be that Arrom tried to do laundry without a shirt exactly for that exact reason.

"We're not going to get anything done if you'll keep this up," the elder man noted amusedly, as he felt once more how Harry's hands touched his sides before making their way to his bare stomach, and then up along his muscles. Arrom had never though a touch could be hungry - but Harry's was _starved_.

"I think we will," Harry answered smiling shyly against his shoulder and kissing his shoulder blade, while his fingers explored new territories curiously - and fairly boldly. "Just, not anything constructive," he added, one hand claiming the centre of Arrom's chest while another trailed downwards again - and further down still. "You could tell me to stop," the younger man mused, his fingers sliding down past Arrom's belt.

Arrom groaned, closing his eyes. No, he really couldn't.

They didn't get any actual exploring done in the following days, nor did they make any process with Arrom's magic. They no longer bothered to try and catch some fish for food either, but Arrom barely noticed that and he doubted Harry did either. They did do great deal of bathing, though, finding that the wooden tub was just the perfect size for two - and when it was heated before hand, they could happily stay in it for hours.

When the Willow finally let them know that it was ready to leave - if they were - Arrom got the distinct impression that the tree was greatly amused by their antics. By that time, though, he didn't have much energy left to care. He and Harry spend the last day mostly swimming in the lake around the island, before replenishing their own water supplies and proclaiming themselves ready to move on.

"Bit of a pity. I liked this planet," Harry mused, while the Willow trembled, bracing for the ascend.

"I'm sure we will find others just as nice," Arrom answered, pulling him close until they sat cuddled at the great tree's base, watching together how the Willow raised the spherical shield around the island. "If not, then we're plenty comfortable here, aren't we?" the elder man asked, stroking his hand up and down Harry's arm.

"Yes, we are," Harry answered softly, leaning to his chest and humming with contentment.

Resting his chin on top of the younger man's hair, Arrom closed his eyes and smiled, letting all the worries of his memories slide away and just enjoying the moment. No matter what had and what would happen, he was sure that this moment made it all worth it.

xx

There we go, shashy slashiness. :)

My apologies for possible grammar errors


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